Category: Uncategorized

BIG PHARMA'S GIANT GAP: According to E&Y, the industry needs 100 Bn USD in new revenue by 2015 just to keep up with market growth, and will try and achieve this by acquisitions. This is a tight window, a giant stretch, and has some honest madness of the driving capitalist model for endless growth. To achieve revenues of this scale, not just pipeline hopefuls, this means that there has to be mergers of giants, or greater internationalization, because the pool of available candidates shrinks every year. http://lnkd.in/7NFM94 View in LinkedIn

JAPAN has a very unique culture and history, and according to this interesting article, they combine with the language to make Japanese leaders have a poor grasp of marketing as we know it in the West. An insightful read. http://m.adage.com/article?articleSection=guestcolumnists&articleSectionName=GuestColumnists&articleid=http%3A%2F%2Fadage.com%2Fcolumns%2Fpost%3Farticle_id%3D242775 View in LinkedIn

GOOGLE'S INFOGRAPHIC for its strategy. Refreshing. I have sat through endless numbers of strategy presentations in binders with tabs and too many words. This elegant infographic says it all in two pictures. http://lnkd.in/dNMh2P View in LinkedIn

THERAPEUTIC VACCINES arrived with the vaccine against cervical cancer, Gardasil, a landmark approval. And there are vaccines in trials against many more diseases. Traditionally, vaccines were only against infectious diseases. But now they are being developed to train the body's immune system to watch for pathologic changes of the host's own body and mount an immune attack to destroy it. DNA vaccines can do this both with T cells and antibodies, and will be doubly powerful. Very exciting development a long time in the making. http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE95P14Y20130626?irpc=932 View in LinkedIn

OPEN INNOVATION was promoted by Henry Chesbrough of the University of California at Berkeley, who ran the Center for Open Innovation. It involved know-how and patent trading to deepen the innovative process by encouraging external collaboration. Sir Tim Berners-Lee used a different model from Open Innovation when he invented the World Wide Web, having no patent and no royalties. The net effect, however, has essentially been the same, with open source collaboration and rich idea exchange. It would be curious to learn of the discussions that led up to the decision to not pursue a patent. View in LinkedIn

MCKINSEY identified several technologies that can reach 20-30 Bn in India by 2025. The Roosevelt Island initiative in NYC by mayor Bloomberg also bet on a basket of technologies to create a 2 Bn USD technology hub to generate buckets of future taxes and near-term construction jobs. The Barcelona KEY initiative is a similar initiative, set atop a 13 year massive investment on the Knowledge Revolution in Catalonia. The EU has been similar influenced to spend a large amount of cash on technology innovation to grow itself out of the Crisis. All these are bets on science and technology. http://m.economictimes.com/articleshow/20755956.cms View in LinkedIn

3D PRINTING of heart valves and bionic ears, using a hydrogel assembly frame that then gets populated with aortic or cochlear cells after incubation with a brew of pure cells. Chuck Hull invented stereolithography with his 1986 patent, while working for 3D Systems in California (famously described as "any system capable of solidification"). But like the inventors of the internet in 1989 (who? Sir Tim Bergers-Lee, now an MIT Professor). these are curiously not household names but should be. Clearly two immense inventions that have changed, and are continuing to change, our world. View in LinkedIn

FOOD COMPANIES have played fast and free with society's food ever since Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. We are eating chickens at five weeks after battery farming, and we have been completely seduced by the toxic mix of fat, sugar and salt. We were switched to hydrogenated margarine from butter, to skimmed milk from whole milk. Flimsy nutritional studies have flip-flopped annually to support the latest processed trends. This has been a sad history of profits over health, sham over transparency. Time to get it right. View in LinkedIn

MEDICAL BREAKTHROUGHS of the decade surely do include the Human Genome and stem cells whose impact is yet to come. But reflect on this: it is unlikely any single breakthrough now or in the future will have the enormous public health impact of the invention of the sewage system, vaccinations, and penicillin. The sewage system alone probably trumps all others in terms of lives saved. In our lives today, clean global drinking water is the new sewage system challenge. Solve that and save millions of lives. That is worth a Nobel. http://lnkd.in/JcH4MH View in LinkedIn

BIG URBAN MYTH: no drug costs one billion to develop. This is sheer nonsense that Pharma companies enjoy being perpetuated. There are thousands of VC backed Biopharma companies. Have you ever heard of a one billion investment into any of these? Never. Most Biopharma companies have well under 100 million invested. Big Pharma sometimes publishes this number by accounting for their inefficient carrying costs, which should be an embarrassment not a triumph. Replicating this nonsense is absurd and irresponsible journalism." "" " http://lnkd.in/Dw6VjV View in LinkedIn