I am currently working as a Biologist. If I want to diversify my career, what will be the right options for me?

Well, I could not understand your question? Moreover i am trying to answer you with explicit examples and application of biologist whether it is diversified in your language or multidisciplinary/trans-disciplinary in academic language.

Now in this economical era every professional want to earn more money but professionalism restricts you to jump here and there unnecessarily which is not possible and worthy at the same time it leads you to the frustration if you do not know the definition of your profile.

One must apply the intelligentsia to explore the multiple opportunities but suitability and career advancement factor must be analyzed structurally.

There are some examples for your understanding so that you can analyze the positive and negative side of true diversification/multidisciplinary/ trans-disciplinary etc for a biologist:

1. Graduate in Biotechnology + MBA = Managerial skill (positive)
2. Graduate /Master/Ph.D in Biotechnology + MBA = Top managerial skill (strong positive)
3. Graduate/Master/Ph.D in Biotechnology/Biological Sciences/Life Sciences + Journalism/LLB/Hotel Management/Fashion Technology/ etc = null and wide approach -skill less (negative)
4. Graduate / Master/Ph.D in Biology + Ph.D in Bioinformatics/ Nanotech/Marine / Biophysics= Vibrant Scientist (Strong positive)

These above listed combination no 3 seem to be odd where I said strong negative, why? One can understand about the odd pairing of degree as you did graduation to Ph.D with Biology and then all of a sudden you jumped to journlaism/Legal/Hotel/Fashion where you past educations have no coherency with your present degree, therefore your recruiter can understand about your problem and will simply say sorry I can not offer you any job. It will explain one thing about you that you have poor understanding of your qualification or simply you want wonder in your life.

In contrast the other option no. 1,2, & 4 are normal and complementary to each other what people are doing so. Now you can estimate the profit of such investment and earn the benefits in so many folds.
In this technological era multidisciplinary approaches being developed to combine the skills to understand one problem and try to assure the multiple solutions eventually different sections at different level will be benefited.

After such a long explanation you can ask yourself and get the answer of diversity in true sense.

Good luck

Manoj

Dear Aspirant, you have not written your question in detail. As a biologist what is your qualification and where and on what position you are working. Now you wish to diversify your field. What I infer from your question is that now you no more wish to work as biologist.

You are a biologist, it means you are technically qualified person. You may diversify your field but you will be having more opportunities in private sector compared to government fields (university or inststitute). You can diversify your field into following fields;

You may diversify into management field by doing MBA. You may choose either marketing or human development. If you have studied microbiology then you can pursue some management course in Hospital administration. By doing this you can act as technical person holding a degree of management. Now you work as manager or administrator. If you are working as biologist in any private organization, after obtaining a degree in MBA, you will be responsible for management aspects, who can still look after the scientific persons working. At this position, you can better understand and monitor the technical or scintific aspects of working.

Another thing you may also do LLB (Bachelor of law), the degree of LLB be make you technically qualified for for legal affairs of biological asppects. You may work as a scientist looking into the affairs of patents and copyrights of biological things. I know some persons who have obtained a doctoral egree in botany, Microbiology or biotechnology and after that they studied LLB. Presently these guys are working as legal advisor for patenting the things related to biological things.

If you are working as botanist or zoologist, still you can diversify your subject while being in biological field. There are many senior professor in universities who are basically botanist or zoologist but now they are working as microbiologist or biotechnologist or cell biologist. These people have cahnged their reserch field. They concentrated working on cell biology or biotechnology or other demanding subject.

One of my colleague has done MSc in Botany, PhD in Microbiology and after working on plants and microbes for several years, he diversified his research aspects into Nanotechnology.

From these examples you may decide your field of diversification.

Good Luck...