Editor’s Choice: Share and share alike : Article : Bioentrepreneur

Share and share alike

Taking a biotech invention from bench to market is an expensive undertaking. Starting with a promising drug target or device prototype, company founders face a series of hurdles relating to space, equipment, personnel and legal and accounting demands. Because the setting up of this infrastructure is capital and labor intensive, and it takes place before the achievement of key clinical milestones, the biotech model has traditionally relied on attracting a large initial round of investment to fence away intellectual property and support translation and commercialization.Yet the business model for innovation by startup companies is undergoing a remarkable transformation. The past decade has witnessed advances in open-source software, cloud computing, rapid prototyping of hardware, logistics in transportation of goods worldwide and mobile communication, leading to the establishment of a ‘sharing economy’. In the tech economy, startup com
panies can now access a co-working space, use cloud-based servers and collaborate with the larger community for coding needs. This sharing model is particularly effective when the resources involved are expensive, specialized or scarce.

For the full article on Bioentreprenuer visit: http://www.nature.com/bioent/2015/151101/full/bioe.2015.12.html