Coming from a traditional lab setting where I did my graduate work, I saw that most labs were full of custom gear. By definition, to do research that has not been done before you often have to build custom equipment and software. I think with the cost of distribution and manufacturing going down, we will see more scientists spin our their equipment....
On Wednesday, May 16, 2012 5:18:27 PM UTC-4, drllau wrote:
http://www.xconomy.com/--seattle/2012/05/03/virtual- biotech-companies-built-on- solid-bedrock-or-unstable- landfill/
Virtual companies (email + idea) is becoming more prevalent as it reduces the capital intensity required to start up.
However the criticism are valid (apart from spin-offs) ... given that 50% of published scientific results are in error, what chance does an individual in a bathroom lab (satire here ... no criticism meant here as Curries did their nobel prize winning work in similar fashion) have for grabbing attention of the financial gatekeepers?
Also the fact remains thatf face time is important as that gut feeling of whether you can work with a person cannot replaced. The role of clusters is to bring diversity and scarce talent in close proximity, much like all the real protein work is done in intracellular organelles and not genome. So whist the virtual company is a nice concept, perhaps what is needed instead is a co-op structure, loosely collaborating groups with a single objective but no top-down hierachical control. See book Emergence as example of what can be done. Anyway, that's the thought for the month.
Lawrence
http://www.linkedin.com/in/drllau
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