Science Lessons: What the Business of Biotech Taught Me About Management
- Gordon Binder &
- Philip Bashe
Harvard Business Press, 2008 292 pages, hardcover, $29.95 9781591398615 | ISBN: 978-1-5913-9861-5
Building a sustainably profitable biotech company from scratch and advancing innovative medicines to patients is no easy task. The lessons from our industry's pioneers teach us that this effort requires 10–20 years from inception and somewhere from $1–2 billion of invested capital. The “ministerial zeal” of George Rathmann, who co-founded Amgen (nee “Applied Molecular Genetics”) in 1980, drove the beginnings of one of these remarkable stories, now told as a primer on the business of science in Science Lessons. Where Genentech prevailed through the best science and its landmark alliance with Roche and where Biogen Idec succeeded more slowly with the solid foundation of a coveted royalty stream, Amgen's story is defined by the discoveries of two blockbuster products—recombinant versions of erythropoietin (EPO) and granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF)—that were commercialized nine and eleven years, respectively, from company founding. In other words—big products, real fast.
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