Into Classrooms, and Beyond
The next big business opportunity for biotech researchers may be quite close to the classroom. The Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) revolution is here and it is bringing with it many new possibilities. Read more
The next big business opportunity for biotech researchers may be quite close to the classroom. The Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) revolution is here and it is bringing with it many new possibilities. Read more
Grow up fifteen minutes from Silicon Valley and you will inevitably encounter entrepreneurs and their start-ups. One of my earlier experiences with a biotechnology-themed start-up was having a classmate’s dad stop by our sophomore year biology class to talk about where he worked. With the same classmate’s father, we also took a field trip to the research lab. This was back in 1998, where rather than mulling over the concept of a company built around one or two high-risk, high-payout products, I was instead fascinated with how professional and accurate their pipets were compared to the ones entrusted to us high school students. That company with the impressive set of pipets, Genentech, apparently had a number of other impressive assets: it went on to be acquired by Roche for $47 billion and has more than a dozen drugs approved by the FDA. Read more
I recently attended CALBIO 2013 in San Diego, along with Samy Hamdouche, Andrew Lim and Weston Nichols. The event was headlined by Craig Venter and Patrick Soon-Shiong, and breakout sessions featured industry veterans who discussed topics ranging from corporate venture capital to university tech transfer. Most importantly, there were numerous opportunities to mix and mingle, both during casual coffee breaks and formal speed-dating sessions. Read more
There has been considerable chatter about the glut of life science PhDs and a corresponding lack of jobs upon graduation. In the US, most graduate students in this field plan on becoming academics or industry scientists. But during my time in Korea, most life science graduate students I spoke with hoped to become professors, and nary a student spoke of industry. Despite a near-universal desire to enter academia, university positions are limited and competition is fierce (much like the US). Concurrently, Korea is gradually becoming competitive in the biotech arena, requiring more industry scientists to drive this engine of growth. Feeding all this is a large pool of domestically educated Korean scientists who are seeking positions after graduation. Read more
I wear two hats, one of a PhD student at University of Cambridge, and the other of a biotech social entrepreneur – in 2012 my lab mate Christian Guyader and I started Global Biotech Revolution (GBR). The Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO), as part of its outreach to organizations that support young people, invited us to attend the annual BIO convention in Chicago, where we hoped to learn how the world’s premier biotechnology conference functions. Read more
Continuing our interview series with life sciences venture capitalists (here for previous post) to accompany a study on venture capital in emerging markets published in the March 7th, 2013, issue of Nature Biotechnology, we turn our eye to India. Our second interview is with Aditya Kapil, who was a principal at VentureEast at the time of our interview in 2012. Read more
Biotech entrepreneurs looking for new ways to start a company on the global stage may find the example of Alma Bio Therapeutics inspiring and instructive. Read more
By the time you read this the US presidential race may well be over and the incumbent will be looking back on a campaign well fought. For me, a lasting memory will be the three presidential debates. The first and last were relatively gentle affairs with no particularly memorable moments. The second, however, was a blistering encounter with punch and counter-punches, narrowly won by President Obama. It hinged, at least to me, on an error on Governor Romney’s part, in which he insisted that the President had not made a statement that he actually had. The effect of such a small part of a very wide-ranging debate was a classic example of the importance of words and how they are used. Read more
The word entrepreneur is thrown around a lot (including on this blog), and when it’s used that frequently, it can begin to lose its meaning. The term sounds vaguely swashbuckling, as if every person it applies to is flippantly quitting a secure academic job to roll the dice on a sexy, but probably doomed, start-up. Read more
In the late 1960s Spencer Silver, a chemist at the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, was hard at work developing a super strong adhesive. Eventually, however, what he produced was fantastically weak glue. But Silver simply refused to allow his “failed” experiment to dissipate into the ether. So do you know what he did? He did precisely what scientists don’t do often enough: he started talking to people and asking for help. He gave formal company presentations, he dragooned colleagues in the hallway, and he generally chatted with anyone who’d listen. Read more