Can Science Be a Business?

Can Science Be a Business? Lessons from Biotech.
By: Pisano, Gary P.,
Harvard Business Review,
October 2006, Vol. 84, Issue 10

Biotech has not delivered on its promise because the industry's structure--much of it borrowed from Silicon Valley--is flawed. Businesses engaged in advancing basic science as a core activity need a new design

Financially, biotech still looks like an emerging sector. Despite the commercial success of companies such as Amgen and Genentech and the stunning growth in revenues for the industry as a whole, most biotechnology firms earn no profit. Nor is there evidence that they are significantly more productive at drug R&D than the much maligned behemoths of the pharmaceutical industry.


Gary P. Pisano (gpisano@hbs.edu)is the Harry E. Figgie, Jr., Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School in Boston.

This article was adapted from Science Business: The Promise, the Reality, and the Future of Biotech, to be published by Harvard Business School Press in November 2006.