The Big Experiment

About The Big Experiment

Ever wondered how technology start-ups, well, start-up? For most founder entrepreneurs, it is the biggest experiment they'll ever run. Like most experiments, the result isn't known beforehand and it often doesn't work first time. On a bigger scale, how do big tech companies turn innovative science into profit? Mark Davison interviews founder scientists, executives, investors, communicators, and others in the technology start-up and corporate science ecosystems. Learn how great ideas turned into thriving businesses (or not) from those who made it happen (or didn't). Get business tips, lessons learned, and life lessons straight from the people who know. Inspiring, disastrous, funny: hear what life in a science-driven company is really like. Straight-talking, no nonsense, but conversational style. All technical content is explained for the non-specialist - you don't need a PhD or fluency in jargon and technobabble.

Publisher

Mark Davison

Category

business · science · science

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

5 Mar 2024

Latest episode

10 Nov 2025

Latest episodes

27 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   10 Nov 2025

   Tim Corcoran: Cosmetics from Cyanobacteria

   Is the answer to sustainable chemical manufacturing floating in our oceans? Ocean cyanobacteria, like plants, use sunlight as power to help them make complex chemicals. Traditional industrial chemistry requires a lot of power and can be quite polluting. Cyanobacteria are actually more efficient at producing high-value chemicals, while capturing carbon dioxide rather than releasing it. In this episode I am joined by Tim Corcoran, Founder and CEO at Deep Blue Biotech, who's proving this r...

2. 

   12 Oct 2025

   From Jellyfish to Wound Healing with Dr Andrew Mearns-Spragg

   What if the solution to chronic wound healing has been floating in our oceans for 600 million years? Jellyfish collagen isn't just different from the cow and pig-derived materials used in medicine today. It's actually better at healing human tissue. I sit down with Dr Andrew Mearns-Spragg, Founder and Chief Scientific Officer at Jellagen, who's proving this remarkable claim with hard data. His research shows jellyfish collagen outperforms traditional materials in vocal fold repair, triggers f...

3. 

   10 Aug 2025

   Jenny Barnett: New tests and drugs for schizophrenia

   Can neuroscience finally catch up with the complexity of mental illness? Society faces a huge and growing burden from mental illness and impairment. Schizophrenia, for example, is a bigger socioeconomic burden than all cancers put together. We have medicines for some of these conditions, but typically they work well for some, not at all for many, and cause side-effects for others. One of medicine's greatest challenges has been identifying exactly which patients will benefit from a treatment b...

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

2 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 32 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

41

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

60

Contact The Big Experiment

Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.