1975. Bill Gates and Paul Allen at Microsoft are not ready to release the software they had publicized. Simple solution: they say it's ready and better than anything in existence. Result: most rivals are ready to quit. Gates and Allen then send anonymous colleagues around to buy at a discount what others have developed. They subsequently combine what they collected with what they had, package it after ironing out visible flaws, and deliver, awaiting consumer complaints to polish and release a final version. By then, most rivals are bankrupt and business is booming. It is only business, after all. This strategy was named vaporware, and helped Microsoft most of the way. Vaporware is defined as “products announced far in advance of any release (which may or may not actually take place)”1. The procedure is based on the principle that the more media coverage a product obtains, the better it will sell. So telling the press early is always a good idea. A similar phenomenon now appears to be occurring in the world of genomics.
Welcome to the world of vapornomics (vaporware + genomics = vapornomics). Biotechnologists often benefit from the experience of others when it comes to business management, and many biotechnology executives, armed with a portfolio of controversial patented sequences, have now become experts at vapornomics by proclaiming enormous numbers of recently cloned genes (fully sequenced and characterized), by seducing colleagues with the number of drugs they have developed in the past year, propelling several of them to phase II and III trials, and by claiming millions of bases sequenced every day using minimal staff. Verifying this information is another matter. Nevertheless, market capitalization invariably increases as a result of these claims, with borrowing potential soaring accordingly. More staff join and equipment rolls in. Most venture capitalists base their investment decisions on predicted future earnings and can only verify complex scientific information to a limited extent. Until the time comes for products to be released, earnings to increase, and profitability to materialize, capital is provided on trust. Meanwhile executives fly high on credit.
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