Buzz Kill....

Stories like this are not what a person who is in the research tools market likes to read. You can assume that our income matches that NIH funding levels. This isn't a news flash to me, as I worry about this a lot, but that was a nice summary of all of my worries written in a better manner than I can write it.

To any AUTM people left over coming here from the last post....you should figure that it will affect my ability to license....more about that in my next post.

some other AUTM observations...

Another comment I didn't make, but wanted to, while in the audience.

• Question asked by some University guy - "Why are so many companies looking overseas? Is is just cheaper?"

My answer, but I had already asked 1 question in that session, would have been NO - cheaper hasn't been the driver for me. I will, and do, go where the technology is. The overseas countries (and I am US based in case that wasn't blindingly obvious) have been investing a whole lot in their research. In terms of things I can license, this is paying off. We have done several deals with German universities this year already. Last year we were over 50% ex US in our licenses. Mostly Europe, in it's broadest definition, but also a couple from India. 1 from South Africa (and yes, that totally surprised me too when we found it...).

I don't think, but am too lazy to pull all the financials, that the licences from oversease were cheaper than good ole USA ones. I don't think they were easier to do. They certainly made me get up earlier in the morning as to do conference calls with them requires an early start to the day from California. If they were cheaper, it is a matter of a small degree as It didn't lodge in my head.

The panel IBM and Intel folks did answer the question and didn't bring up cost in their answers either.

AUTM meeting

I was just at the AUTM meeting in San Francisco. For those not "in the know" AUTM is the association of university technology managers. Basically the tech transfer office, although I learned there is quite a bit more to it than that.

I served on a panel at the meeting on the first day, which was interesting, and then through out the meeting popped up at a variety of sessions and failed to keep my mouth shut.

The main things I took from the meeting.

• A question was asked by our industry panel on the first day of "What is the University tech transfer offices mission?". I can now say, having sat through many sessions, that every one of the offices has a seperate mission. Many are partly over lapping, and they all have some core in common but there are some pretty big differences. Some places are just tech transfer. Nothing more or less. Others have a mandate to do local area development. i.e. serve as an economic stimulator for the local economy. Others are deeply involved in building translation facilties to really make the technology come out of the university in a way that is much closer to early stage industry work. Much spread. This really does drive me to start asking a series of questions now when I deal with them - starting with "what is your goal". I had been operating on the assumption that it was to license out technology. Now understand that they may, and likely do, have other goals.
• The tech transfer people really have no clue about industry trends. This was highlighted on the second day when the harvard guy was talking about the fact that Harvard is building a facility to do hit screening on compounds and pointed out that Pharma is moving away from that early stage discovery and has been looking to biotech to do that work. Biotech, under pressure from VC's, has been moving away from that slowly. I would say the Harvard guy was right, and as he and I talked about afterwards (he knew this) it has been going on in Pharma this way for several years. The surprising bit was the number of other people in the room who came from large research institutes who did NOT know this fact and had been wondering why Pharma wanted to pay much less for early stage targets.
  
• The decision process within many tech transfer offices on how to pursue patents is NOT driven by what could, today, be licensable. Specifically, many folks were talking about licencing gene panels for diagnostics. This is something I am very interested in doing. They all said "Can't be done" and no one will pay for it. They based this on "the head of the office saying so". My response of "it can be done, and we have done it, and I will pay for it" surprised them. My follow up of once you put it in the public domain you likely kill the market also surprised them.
  
• There are a lot of old white guys in charge....and a lot of woman not in charge. This was probably most clearly show cased by the fact that they gave everyone a free neck tie. Leaving aside the lack of color coordination that my tie had, it is not a very useful gift for a woman. You can make as assumption that she can give it to a significant other if you want to move to a new, and higher, level of sexism. I leave that as an exercise to the reader but I do think it wasn't well done.
• You can't carry bottle openers on a plane. For serving on a panel I was given a wine bottle carrier and a bottle opener. I didn't even look in the bag and just put it in my luggage to carry home. The security guy at the airport was not that understanding...

BUT - the biggest take home message that I got from it was that industry and tech transfer offices really need to do more to understand each other. The things I go through were alien to them. The time pressures, the reason for IP etc.... they sort of got but not so much. On the other side, there was quite a bit that they go through that I don't get. The local development impetus - the number of people who have to sign off, the control from the state/local government were all things that I didn't fully apreciate.

Overall, a really good meeting. Hoping I didn't burn bridges, but I do have a big mouth....

Fish nor Fowl....

Over at "In the pipeline" he is talking about "hybrid" folks. By this he means those who do both chemistry and biology, and there is a bit of worry about whether or not they will be able to get jobs afterwards. He thinks academia will be more open to these folks than industry. I don't really know enough about this to comment on his example, but I would suggest a seperate example.

Bioinformatics.

Recently, I was asked and answered about a woman who got a degree in bioinformatics and what should she do. I don't think I was overwhelmingly helpful to her, but I do think it points to the exact oppisate problem that Derek is talking about. I think the Bioinformatics degree is TOO specialized and not broadly useful. I think bioinformatics in the context of doing biology is good, but the bioinformatician has to (in my opinion) understand biology. They need to understand it at the bench level. In my view of the world, and I have worked with and managed several bioinformaticians, I have to say that I think the best ones were at one point bench biologists. They just seem to have a better grasp of the real biology behind the scenes. One can do a lot of math on things, but if you don't know what you are really modelling and whether or not that is real then I think you have problems.

Pure Bioinformaticians lack this.

Pure Bench biologists don't, as a general rule, have the programming skills necessary to code this. Most of us also don't have the math to get it done and make do by building a team of biologist/project manager/developer (with the project manager getting the boot a lot of the time). The project manager's job is to "translate" biology to computer and back again.

SO - This is sort of the flip of what Derek is talking about. Here, the bioinformaticians started as the hybrid folks, evolved to a "pure" version, and I think they have more problems now than they did before.

Scientists and boxes

Over here at Defective Yeti is a post you should read. Let me restate that... you should read all of his posts becuase they are really funny. Even his very serious ones are well written so while not funny are worth reading.

In any case, on this post further down is a comment that I will reprint here becuase I like the conclusion (I bolded it for those who just want to skip ahead.)

Did you listen to last weekend's This American Life? It was a repeat, but there was a story about an experiment a psychologist did on children around the age where they're chummy with the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy. The psychologist put a box in the center of the room and told the children that there was NOT a monster in the box. Then he left the room, and the children scooted away from the box. In a second experiment the psychologist told the children that a puppy was not in the box. When the psychologist left the room, the children went to look in the box.

Sounds like 1) People don't grow up 2)Scientists get their kicks by putting boxes in the middle of rooms and telling lies.

Personality types.

So over at YoungFemaleScientist she gets her personality type. I don't think she took it seriously, but you don't know. If you are in sales, you put a lot more stock in these things as it pretty much totally affects how you approach people. AND, at sales training you always go through getting your own.

I am an ENTP.

I was a solid non-beleiver in this stuff....until using it made my sales numbers went up. There is a really good book ( Please understand me) and the follow on books. They are a total good read, and I have to say reading about myself has helped a bunch with how I manage people. Understanding them gives good guidance on what they want and what kind of goals to set for them. Understanding customers helps understand how they want to hear things, thus helps you close faster.

Anyway... totally worth learning about.

Financial World VS. Bioinformatics for a future?

From some comments back here....

It's absolutely amazing how everything makes sense until you actually start looking for a job. That is when I come to a conclusion that my Ph.D. is field-wise useless. How DO you get that first experience if no-one wants to hire a "book-worm"? With the exception of summer-time gigs back in undergrad, what else can anyone leaving a Ph.D. program boast? I am confused, to say the least... I am (almost) where the other guy is -- 26, Ph.D. in Bioinformatics, no kids BUT I am married and thus stuck in the New York Metro area. One would assume that with all the big pharma around someone would take a chance on the new girl, but nooooo.... Well at least not yet. Plenty of places that want me to do pattern recognition on financial data though. So my question is this: Is it worth it to look for/take a job in consulting (hopefully closer to bio) or an analyst position in finance (don't know how that's gonna work out if I've never went past the first "intro to finance" book in my life)? Or should I hold out for pharma to come around? (alternatively: should I build a neural net to predict my chances:)?)
I would really not want to leave bio completely, but I got to eat, right?
Thanks for the advice...

Not too sure what to say.... Bioinformatics is a rough one. I am seeing a lot of resumes come across my desk from this area. I have a background of a couple of years working in it so know a bit, and I am not that bullish on it.

A lot of companies have gone in to the bioinformatics space...not many have made money. Lion built the SRS system, got paid a bunch of money to develop stuff...and then got sold for not very much money to Biowisdom. OmniViz just "merged" with them as well. Rosetta/Merck is making a good run of it.... but I wouldn't say that any of them are making a whole lot of money. The number of start up's who have come and gone is too long to list here....

A round about way of saying I don't know what you should do. Staying in Bioinformatics is a rough way to go. The other companies and types of companies that you mention have, I think, a better future.....Given that you have to live in NYC, I would go to the financial world...

...Realizing how far from the bench I am.... more patents

When reading this entry on a site that in and of itself indicates "you aren't at the bench anymore" I realized that A> I understood the entire thing, legal words and all AND B>It actually affects some decisions I am making right now.

never would have guessed that I would get here from grad school...

bears colts , Sad...

Wanted New England becuase I lived there so long....

Wanted New Orleans for 2 reasons. First - that would be such a great comeback story. Second, and far more importantly, I live in fear of seeing "the superbowl shuffle" from the last time the bears were in the superbowl (I think). If that video is on TV ever I am not responsible for my actions.

more follow up answers to questions in the comments...

Way back here, on the post that I originally started this blog to get out there, someone new asked a question. Quoted in entirety here....

Hi. I've spent a considerable amount of time how browsing your blogs and have been throughly entertained! Thanks! I'm in my final year of the PhD (neuroscience/physiology) and it is past time for me to leave the ivory tower. I simply have no interest in the (quite flawed) current academic system where (from my perspective) great ideas are formulated and "sold" to granting agencies but are rarely implemented (or are implemented at a ridiculously slow pace). Also, spending another 10 years in medical school/residency/fellowship just does not seem like the best way to spend my late 20's and early 30's. Simply put, I'm tired of being poor and am not SO enthralled with research/medicine that I'm willing to sacrifice the next several years in a lab or in the classroom. I feel that I am very personable and have excellent analytical skills that I believe would serve me well in the business world. My question is this: if you were in my shoes (single, no kids, 25 years old, finishing up graduate school in the next 12 months, no business experience) looking to break into the business world, would you seek out an FAS type position or would you look to directly enroll in a business school? It seems to be a big financial risk to spend 60-80K on an MBA on the HOPE of picking up a quality job upon completion. Conversely, how long will have to work at the lowest rung of the totem pole before being "qualified" to take the entry level MBA job? Would my career potentially progress faster with the MBA? Any advice/insights would be greatly appreiated!

My advice is to take the FAS position. I can't find the post where I mention this (or even verify that my memory that I did so is accurate) but when I joined with a Ph.D. I was working with an MBA. He moved on and I got to see his salary. I earned more than he did. Coupled with that, Ph.D. MBA is a lot of schooling but no practical experience. I still wouldn't hire you in to my group without seeing some field/relevant experience out of you. To be blunt -> School teaches you how to think but doesn't actually teach you anything useful. By this I mean, you don't know how the industry ACTUALLY works. You have some great theories, and you have likely heard about stuff, but there is nothing like an actual kick in the teeth to really teach you. In addition, the books don't teach you how to "smell it" where "it" is anything relevant. You can text book tell me what happened, but I need you to be able to talk to people and remember that the last time you heard "that" the company went *boom* 6 months later. Anyone can look back (given enough data) and say why it happened. I want to see instincts that say it *will* happen. Those range from "They have beeen doing that assay forever and that means they are stuck on figuring out X" to "All the sales people are bailing and someone else just left to spend time with the family, which means Y".

You can't get that from class. I won't pay you for the book stuff. I will pay you for the field stuff.

You can get the MBA later once you get some experience. I heavily recommend (and may some day myself get) an executive MBA. 1 yr, with people who know stuff, doing real world problems.
Get out and get a job.

***note** the "I'm tired of being poor" so closely matches a revelation I had one day in an elevator...after I found out what professors earn in salary. Totally resonates with me. I wanted to do good work AND get paid well. Selfish that way....

Good luck!

IP, Lawsuits, and is it getting worse?

So, Like every other company in this space, we are in a bunch of law suits. We are in suits with our competitors where they are suing us. In turn, we are suing them. Oh yeah -> they are all suing each other as well. There are a couple of lop sided ones where only 1 party is suing the other and the other has not yet fired back. I would guarentee that privatly they are having a conversation along the lines of "stop or we will sue you back", so it may be just a matter of time before those imbalances are righted.

My question last week, in a moment of complete desperation over what was going on, was "is this worse now than in the past, or am I just young?".

I did some work. First I asked those older than me. It is worse now was the answer. It used to be you could all watch the individual cases in the industry and eveyone would talk about them. Now, most people don't even know all of the cases we are in never mind what the sum total for the industry is.

Then I looked at press releases over the last years I can find at all the companies... yep -> getting worse.

We are now at the point where, essentially, everything we try and sell requires a license from someone. We (I actually...) spend a lot of time on freedom to operate and working with lawyers on this, but there is so much. It is, almost, 100% guarenteed that you miss one until you are a fair ways in to the project. You don't want to. You spend 10's of thousands of dollars on lawyers trying not to. But, pretty frequently you do. Frequently enough that I am now pretty paranoid until we have found the problem because I assume that the fact that we haven't found it means we have missed it not that it doesn't exist.

...and now a digression/example of how this works these days.....

Normally the patent we find comes from some totally left field place that you wouldn't expect. I mean, finding it from a university of some famous academic -> Expect that. Look there first anyway and talk to their tech transfer office (they will always try and license you something, but rarely know the background...). Recently we have been on a streak of turning up stuff that we are just getting interested in, and a large number of papers are coming out of academic labs on (and people getting big notice on!!!) ----and patents were issued in the late 90's to a bunch of different japanese electronics firms on the core ideas. They didn't commercially launch a product, so the only way you know about this work is if you search the patents. AND - oh yeah - They used their own vocabulary so simple text word searching wont work. You have to understand the concepts as they describe them to see that they are talking about exactly what is being talked about in the literature today. Given how much we have put in to this project already... this is a big big big kick in the teeth. I now am talking to them to license and move forward. This will, likely, move at a glacial pace as that is how most deals with them evolve.

The really funny part of this is the academics running around thinking they found something new. I KNOW that they have gone to their tech transfer offices and tried to file patents, as those offices have approached me. They are pretty shocked when I reply "How do you distinguish over this 6 series patent" (The 6 referes to the first number and if you live this crap you know how old that makes it. We are doing 7's right now). I can only wonder if the academics hear back on this? If they do, what do they do? Will the read the patents and copy the work and claim it as their own? (as there is extension to what they have published in the already published patent specs?)

I am skeptical enough of academic science that I don't think they tell anyone but do read and copy.

In any case -> that long diversion illustrates a lot of work that I do.

Once we find the patent, we then either try and work around it (not practice it) or license it. Everyone has a price....the question is "are they sensible?" as many peoples prices are quite high. They think they hold the holy grail and that we should pay up. Sometimes we do, so I can't really fault the trying. Got to know when to hold them, know when to run --or whatever that line is. That negotiation is the fun part of my job (for me...).

Unfortunatly, there are a lot of patents out there and a lot of lawyers. So - companies (ourselves included....) will take a bit of a patent and try and stretch it as far as possible to exclude our competitors from the space. Thus...the court.

I don't know what the answer is, and don't think any of the simplistic ones are it (outlaw patents, make everything free....etc...) but do know that the current status quo will likely break soon in the biotech space.

We will see.

off topic...but really funny

This is good stuff.

Read the ingredients when you get down to that part....

pretty much off topic, but funny none the less.

Someone actually reads an "A list" blogger and tries to decipher it...

There are many posts that I read by "pundits" that make me wonder how I can have back that time I wasted. So many that I stopped reading them as they thought they were telling me the future. The problem being that they are so busy talking about it that they aren't really helping it happen. I long ago got the feeling that they weren't actually saying anything and were just writing for the sake of seeing their words on the screen. I would imagine they check how many people read on an hourly basis. The fact that I didn't totally "get it" was also a bit annoying. I didn't want to spend the time to understand...

SO - Joel went and used the secret decoder ring on one article and after he wasted a bunch of time he shows that my hunch was right. Now any lingering doubt I had has been erased.... I am sorry Joel had to waste that hour (more than an hour he says...) , but better him than me!

Washington Post on working X-mas...

In grad school, I didn't get a Washington Post article about going to work on a Holiday. I got some flak from my now wife, but no article. I would rank this under the things that they trot out once a year to say "look at the weirdo's" and "aren't these people great slaving away to keep you healthy". Good to get some press, but I am a little too jaded to think it actually means anything other than it was a slow news day.

Some random links...

To a really old dudes blog (he is 93).... Life lessons learned.

To the new google patents site. This brings patent search to the way the patent office should do it. When dealing with the patent office, you would be amazed at them. From the notice of allowance (that tells your patent is done, accepted, and will issue) to you acutally getting the patent is 6 months. In that time it moves from office A to office B. You pay a small fee. It issues. Their web site is horrid. Google has done the right thing and made it more searchable. Oh yeah - google went back to before 1976 and made all of that searchable as well (meaning the google site is more searchable than the patent office...go figure). Now all they need to do is add patent applications to it and it will really be useful.

Bad time of year

Those of you not in a sales/quarterly based world (hello academia) probably enjoy this time of year. For me, this is horrid. Our fiscal year wraps up at the end of the year, so any money I can earn before Dec 31 goes in to this year and all of the financial implications that has for both the company and for myself. There is a great incentive to close deals before Dec 31. Sleep is unneccesary.

For me to close deals, Airplanes are involved. Airplanes at this time of year are full of the "non professional" traveller. Many of you would call these people "families" or "students". I look at them as road blocks in security lines and people who fill in the middle seats on airplanes. They also get in the way at check in counters.

SO - to sum up this time of year for myself and many in similar positions....

High stress to close deals, which requires travel that is itself made more stressfull by the large number of people who don't travel that much.

... to top it all off, many people start going on vacation so stuff has to be done even more quickly. Those that are still at work are really about 50% gone.

Every year I get crabby about this...

Positive about your work....

Over on YoungFemaleScientist she has a post about liking what you do. A couple of points.

1. I can't imagine doing something I didn't like. I invest too much, be they hours, thought, interruption of my personal life...whatever... to not like what I am working on.

2. She points to a difference between men and woman that I don't know what I think of.

She states.

This phrase, "I don't think I can" is something I hear all the time from women, but not so often from men.

That's not to say the men don't feel the same way. But more often what I hear from men who leave academia is that they think the system sucks, not that they wouldn't be good enough, if they wanted to be a professor.

...when it comes to the discussion of men vs. woman who have come over to the dark side. She is pointing out something that she hears woman say about academia and use as a justification of why they left.

My initial response was to call BS, because I am argumentative that way... but I don't know. I know why I left, and I know why some others left, but in speaking with the folks who are on the dark side (small n, but mix of both men and woman) none of them say "I don't think I would have made it". I get a lot of "I don't know why you would try" and that comes from both men and woman. BUT => we are all saying that to each other after we have moved. Sample bias and eleborate self justification all rolled in to one.

So, I don't know. Part of me thinks I could have made it if I wanted to, but since I didn't want to I didn't even try. This is true for me -> if I am not in to it, I will be bad at it. SO, the justification is that I "wasn't in to it" and thus punted to avoid being unhappy.

3. Random note about self flaggelation, discussing one of her friends.

She misses the bench (sound familiar? I've heard this from young PIs before)

Why would these people not flee to industry where you can, if you choose, stay at the bench for a long time and make a really good living doing it? This I will never understand.

4. GREAT STATEMENT

News flash: a PhD degree by itself doesn't have magical powers.

Oh yeah. Totally true. Don't know you need to add much to this. A Ph.D. should, if done properly, teach you how to analyze stuff and think for yourself. The rest is up to you.

5. LOVE the competitivness

Statements like
And part of me says, Move over sister, soon it will be my turn!


At the end of the day, I feel we should all like what we are doing. Really love it. I feel that I am worth quite a bit of money per year and that someone should pay me that because I am smart enough to make it pay off for them. I feel that I should be allowed to set priorities for a lot of reasearch groups, and that you should pay me for that. But- most of all- This is what I like doing. I think I am good at all of those things becuase that is what I like doing. I am not doing it becuase someone has set a bar out there that says "this is how you are successful" or "do this to get ahead" -> becuase I think if you are doing it becuase someone else has set a bar that you will be miserable at it and it will haul you down.

If you don't like what you are doing. Change.

sounds so simple....

Recruiters....

In looking through the comments on Derek's post about his site shutting, there was a link to here, talking about recruiters. WOW> I didn't really think it was that bad. My jobs have all come via recruiters. In my current role, I have moved to exclusivly using them to fill spots. They bring me higher quality people than I am getting via monster/biospace/craigs list. HR makes me post and advertise to places, but I try and limit it to what I have to in order to keep them happy. It just drains my budget to do that.

I get an unsoliciated call/email a day for new positions. I am pretty good about writing back to people saying "thanks, but no thanks for right now". You can sort of smell the useless ones that don't know what they are talking about. Those, I am still polite to. I got my current job becuase a recruiter sent me in for the "wrong" job, but the hiring person recognized that I would be useful for what I am currently doing.

So - I pretty much disagree with the poster at the medicine vault pretty completly. To get a senior position I think they are the ONLY way to get the job. For entry level positions, I am a lot less sure. Would guess that you get a lower quality recruiter at that level, so the posting might be accurate or reflective of that - but that is buried in a little sentance at the end of the post.

Holiday gifts

It is the time of year that I have to give gifts to the folks who report to me. Always stressful. What to get them? The standard gift seems to be a good bottle of wine. It is what I gave last year and is likely what I will give this year.

However, due to some turnover, I have some "newer" employees, who have only been working for me for a breif while. Don't know them that well. Is wine acceptable? Hope so, as that is whay I bought this weekend...Hope none of them are recovering alcoholics (or practicing one for that matter) as that would be a kick in the teeth.

....more stuff I didn't think about in grad school.

The other side of a shut down...

A while ago Derek reported that his site (place of work, not Blog) was shutting down. I am sympatheitc to that as that isn't fun, but didn't think too much more about it. Then we started getting the termination of agreement letters and the sales rep in that territory is reporting that there will be a hole. We had a couple of licenses with the site that were lucrative for us. Termination means they won't be paying us that money next year. This means I have a hole that I have to dig out of in my department if I want to show growth and get a bonus. Nothing like what Derek is going through, but I have to say I didn't think of it. Little stupid on my part, as there is pretty much no pharma site around from which I don't derive some part of my yearly income.

These things ripple outward in ways I should have thought about but didn't. In thinking about it, my previous company had a pretty big license in there as well. No idea if they kept it alive for the last few years (no reason to think they wouldn't...) and to them as a smaller company this shut down could be a pretty big deal.