Science Business

The biotech industry constitutes one of the most profound experiments of our time. It is a global-scale effort to take fundamental advances in bio-sciences and convert them into successful businesses that add value to our economy and enhance our health and quality of life. But so far, the grand promise of this industry has not been fulfilled, and there is a general acknowledgment that the sector has failed to perform up to expectations. Why?Gary Pisano, who has spent virtually his entire career studying various aspects of the biotech and pharmaceutical industries, makes a compelling argument that this failure is due to the special character of biotech as a science-based business, and gives a clear-eyed and provocative assessment of deep flaws in the industry resulting from the clash of the distinct realms of science and business. In particular, he identifies three salient characteristics of "drug science" that create unique business challenges: (1) drug science is characterized by profound uncertainty and long time horizons for R&Dso how do you finance investments under these conditions?; (2) drug science knowledge is accumulating at an extremely rapid pace, and builds cumulatively in ways that other technological advances don'tso how do you learn rapidly enough to keep pace with such advances?; and (3) the drug science revolution actually is made up of a constellation of scientific revolutionsso how do you integrate efforts across a broad spectrum of scientific and technological capabilities?The author then turns to prescription, arguing that the key to fixing the industry lies in funding arrangements and arrangements for monetizing intellectual property. This is truly our most contemporary and complex industry, integrally involving biotech firms, investors, universities, established pharmaceutical companies, government regulators, and other players. Pisano argues, compellingly, that the stakes for righting the industry are too high to ignore, with not o nly the fate of the biotech and pharma industries on the line, but also health care and, indeed, the future of human health.