Everybody knows of instances in their own life where initial “mistakes” or wrong decisions turned out to be exactly the right thing. Trivial examples include going to a party that you never really wanted to attend and ending up meeting the person of your life – or running ten minutes late and thereby avoiding a fatal car crash that had just occured down the road.

But what about the most carefully managed area in life – your own career and business? Thinking that wrong business decisions must mean the end of your career? The opposite may be the case, says Paul J.H. Schoemaker, research director of Wharton’s Mack Center for Technological Innovation and chairman and founder of consulting firm Decision Strategies International.

In his book Brilliant Mistakes: Finding Success on the Far Side of Failure, Schoemaker argues that mistakes often open the door to totally new perspectives and findings – and help you reinvent your business or personal career for good. Mistakes have been the basis for many innovations that revolutionized the way we live today – including the discovery of penicillin and the development of ATM machines.  » Read more...

The recent election in Germany’s federal state of Berlin ended with a surprise: a previously almost unknown party, the Pirate Party (Piratenpartei) won 15 of the 152 state parliament seats; nearly every one in ten voters in Berlin casted his ballot for this group, which was founded in 2006 by mostly male young academics and internet-affiliate people.

The program of the party is not very detailed and focuses almost entirely on freedom of information, free access to the internet, free rides on public transport, legalization of drugs and a free basic income for everyone living permanently in Germany.

While the program does not say anything about economic policy (nor on defense or international policy), it includes several statements on the life sciences and pharma industry.

For one, the party opposes patents on genes and living beings (as it opposes software patents and patents on business ideas), and in the long run aims to abolish the entire patent system. The program also states that “patenting of findings from genetic research and biotechnology … poses a great danger to tomorrow’s society.” Such patents should be forbidden by law. Moreover, the program adds that patents on pharmaceuticals, too, should be abandoned as they have “ethically highly objectionable” consequences.  » Read more...

Last month, The Wharton School of the University of Pennsilvania dedicated a special edition of their prestigious Knowledge@Wharton newsletter to the biopharmaceutical industry. Most importantly, the authors dealt with the pressing question how the industry may continue to develop innovative drugs – and get them approved faster.

Summarizing the current challenges, the report states that “no one doubts that the drug industry’s traditional model for developing new cures is badly broken. Fewer exciting new medicines are reaching patients these days, even as spending on research and development has risen and blockbuster drugs that have long been the backbone of pharmaceutical profits have lost their patent protection. A widening gap divides the discovery of promising new laboratory compounds from the ability to turn them into innovative therapies. A similar gap separates recent scientific gains in understanding genes from the creation of new drugs that use this knowledge to fight disease.”  » Read more...

What are the rules of investing in science-based innovation? How much long-term thinking does it take to get through tightened markets and economic downturns? These questions are at the core of Vicki L. Sato´s research, who is a Professor of Management Practice in the Technology and Operations Management unit at Harvard Business School. In addition, she is also an advisor to Atlas Venture´s life sciences team.

In her view, smart science-based businesses regard today´s economic difficulties as an opportunity to boost their research and innovation for long-term competitive advantage. However, she cautions, different situations require different business decisions and investing in R&D is not always the key to success. The right approach, Sato argues, is to evaluate innovation management challenges from various  perspectives, such as corporate strategy, organizational design, decision-making, and resource allocation. This is even more important as key investment metrics, which are  measuring a company´s past and current financial performance, will not suffice as a stand-alone parameter in determining future success. Even though this is not a new observation and Sato admits that “the rules haven´t been written yet in this field of study”, the faculty research focuses on best practices and cases studies and may therefore come up with insightful and valuable concepts on investing in science-based businesses. We are looking forward to any future updates!  » Read more...

In his 2002 novel Prey, Michael Crichton develops a scary scenario about the impact of “molecular manufacturing”, i.e. the convergence of nanotechnology, biotechnology, and information & communication technologies. The concept focuses on the risks of self-replicating, so-called  “nanoscale assemblers” and was originally published by scientists K. Eric Drexler (former co-founder of the Foresight Institute) and Richard Feynman. Criticized and challenged by fellow scientists such as Nobel Prize winner Richard Smalley, the concept of molecular manufacturing nevertheless reflects society´s fear of novel, unknown technologies – specifically, the fear of losing control over some seemingly overwhelming artificial power.

In their paper “Are We Really the Prey? Nanotechnology as Science and Science Fiction“, Australian scientists Diana M. Bowman, Graeme A. Hodge, and Peter Binks have analyzed the impact, chances and risks of the molecular manufacturing concept. Calling not only for improving the regulatory framework on novel technologies such as nanotechnology, their key conclusion is that “unwillingness to engage in public dialogue is a consumer and citizen backlash waiting to happen, as was experienced with biotechnology. Current real developments in nanotechnology offer exciting opportunities to advance the human condition; however, implausible ideas framed by some scientists only serve to influence the creative talents of science fiction writers, like Crichton, who then prey on the public’s lack of knowledge of the current boundaries of nanotechnology for entertainment’s sake.”  » Read more...