tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5574479.post2932549274214586322..comments2024-03-29T09:21:58.696+00:00Comments on The IPKat: Will too much of one and not enough of the other spell bad news for innovation?Verónica Rodríguez Arguijohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05763207846940036921noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5574479.post-17634750464733529572016-11-07T13:48:39.261+00:002016-11-07T13:48:39.261+00:00The situation which Neil Wilkof describes is perha...<br />The situation which Neil Wilkof describes is perhaps not unusual in the history of industrialization. At the beginning of each wave of industrial development there were a big number of small laboratories, pharmacies, manufacturer etc. Only, one did not call them start-up at that time. If you want, global players such as Bayer, Merck (I mean the German company Merck KGaA and its former U.S. affiliate which is today Merck, Inc.), Boehringer Ingelheim, Pfizer, Siemens, Ford and many others were initially “start-ups”. Not to talk about companies which were born in a garage like Apple and Microsoft. They became the big companies which we all know but many others disappeared or were taken over by bigger players during the time. We have seen this in the past two decades also in the field of gene technology or biotech. <br />Nevertheless, I believe that we should not be too pessimistic. When new innovative approaches and development emerges, there is always the chance of new start-ups provided that the surrounding conditions are favorable for them. Where does R&D usually take place at first hand? At university institutions. What they need is a good funding from the government but also from private industry and private investors allowing them to carry out independent scientific research in the spirit of Alexander v. Humboldt and others. <br />It is certainly true that if a company such as Bayer acquires another company such as Monsanto, there will be somehow a concentration of R&D activities within one company. However, I seriously doubt that this will lead to less R&D activities as such. Big companies are under immense pressure to remain innovative. They have to launch continuously new innovative products on the market. In the field of pharma and agriculture, they must not launch them in a frequency like consumer good industry has to do in fields like chocolate or beverages. R&D for innovative products in the field of pharma and agriculture is very expensive and risky since many attempts can fail. This means that industry’s own R&D departments do a lot to find innovative compounds by themselves. However, in most cases, that will not be sufficient to keep the pipeline of new innovative products filled up. Therefore, collaboration with start-ups and university institutions is key as well as in-license promising compounds which have been developed by such institutions. One should also keep in mind that start-ups usually do not have the know-how or ability to bring complex products such as pharma- and agriculture products to the market in a big number of countries given the highly regulated environment. <br />Another question is certainly how to create a new start-up initiatives out of R&D activities coming from university and to support such approaches. R&D is usually a long process, full of trial and error activities, requiring not only a lot of money but also time !!!. Once a start-up depends on the goodwill of their investors, they have to deliver something promising in a certain period of time. Not every outstanding researcher is also a good manager of a company and the other way around. It is certainly not easy to find the right balance but it works perhaps more often than we may think. One reason why there is now less R&D activities in the Silicon Valley could be that investors are much more carefully when deciding which start up is worth to be supported. There have been so many companies which never developed successful products or services. Another reason could be that there are today also more interesting competitors in other parts of the world. Maybe the R&D environment in the field of IT has changed and requires to find new paths.<br />Christian Schalk<br />This article represents the personal opinion of the author. <br />Christian Schalknoreply@blogger.com