Biotech Best Quotes

For the vast majority of us who reside in the troubled middle, there are no easy answers to the ethical dilemmas that biotechnology can pose. As biotechnology moves forward, we’ll have to carefully evaluate each application on its own terms, trying to balance what’s in the best interests of an individual animal with what’s good for its species as a whole, for humanity, and for the world we all share.

Since it is all based on statistics, the size of the company's database is the key to make accurate predictions. Hence the first company to build a giant genetic database will provide customers with the best predictions, and will potentially corner the market. US biotech companies are increasingly worried that strict privacy laws in the USA combined with Chinese disregard for individual privacy may hand China the genetic market on a plate.

Like all best supporting actors, the state may also step centre stage, taking entrepreneurial risks where the market and commons can’t or won’t reach. The extraordinary success of tech companies such as Apple is sometimes held up as evidence of the market’s dynamism. But Mariana Mazzucato, an expert in the economics of government-led innovation, points out that the basic research behind every innovation that makes a smart phone ‘smart’—GPS, microchips, touchscreens and the Internet itself—was funded by the US government. The state, not the market, turns out to have been the innovating, risk-taking partner, not ‘crowding out’ but ‘dynamising in’ private enterprise—and this trend holds across other high-tech industries too, such as pharmaceuticals and biotech.42 In the words of Ha-Joon Chang, ‘If we remain blinded by the free market ideology that tells us only winner-picking by the private sector can succeed, we will end up ignoring a huge range of possibilities for economic development through public leadership or public-private joint efforts.

Many of the best biotech and pharma companies today have learned to separate the roles of inventor and champion. They train people for the project champion job—the Deak Parsons skill-set—and elevate their authority. It goes against the grain. On the creative side, inventors (artists) often believe that their work should speak for itself. Most find any kind of promotion distasteful. On the business side, line managers (soldiers) don’t see the need for someone who doesn’t make or sell stuff—for someone whose job is simply to promote an idea internally. But great project champions are much more than promoters. They are bilingual specialists, fluent in both artist-speak and soldier-speak, who can bring the two sides together.

The biotech company seemed to follow implicitly, though not explicitly, Louis Pasteur’s adage about creating luck by sheer exposure. “Luck favors the prepared,” Pasteur said, and, like all great discoverers, he knew something about accidental discoveries. The best way to get maximal exposure is to keep researching. Collect opportunities—on that, later.