What Steve Jobs Can Teach The Biotech Field

By all accounts, Steve Jobs was a force of nature. Pedestrian terms like “having a passion” and “commitment to excellence” seem small compared to the high energy and focus he brought to business.  Even today’s generation of narcissistic phonies who parade around parroting lines from high achievers while under achieving realized he was the Real Deal. (A quick aside – Have you ever notice that people who mouth the phrase ”failure is not an option” usually fail?)

What separated Jobs from other people wasn’t simply his technical know-how and imagination. What separated Jobs from others was that he flat out lived his value of extreme excellence. In that regard, he was the personification of the Apple brand. His values flowed through every facet of the business – even to the advertising of Apple products. Excellence wasn’t some contrived marketing gimmick.

Jobs once said the following:

Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we've done something wonderful … that's what matters to me.– Wall Street Journal, 1993

Taking the concept of creating something wonderful for the customer and translating it to revolutionary products is really what it’s all about.  Have we in the biotech industry lost sight of this?

How To Bring Biotech Products To Market Quickly

Finding life science technologies to commercialize can be a challenge. Working with technology transfer departments at many research universities can also be a slow process. This begs the question, Why don't the scientists responsible for the discovery of a life science technology have more say in the commercialization process?

In other countries, scientist have much more control over the commercialization process. The research university where the discovery takes place still gets its cut of the profits generated from the technology, but the scientist has the option of working directly with business interests who may be interested in bringing the technology to market.

Under the current system, technology licensing offices and technology transfer offices centralize the commercialization process. This, however, grants these entities monopoly control over licensing activities. Since university and federal labs already get a cut of the income from intellectual property rights, Why should they have a say over licensing as well? Furthermore, it can be argued that some universities are satisfied with their returns, and see no reason for further licensing of some technologies. This holds back innovation, as well as the amount of business a technology can generate.

Allowing the scientists to have a say in the commercialization process would increase the number of technologies brought to the marketplace. What's more, it would occur at a quicker rate.