This Partnerships for Innovation (PFI) project--a Type III (C:A) partnership between College of Charleston, an institution new to the PFI Program (defined as one that has never been a PFI grantee), and University of Louisville, an NSF PFI graduate (0438604)--seeks to create a comprehensive model for commercialization of biomedical innovations by combining the systematic search model developed at the University of Louisville with a team composition model developed at the College of Charleston, which identifies the characteristics of individuals likely to form a winning venture team. The proposal endeavors to catalyze the development of the biomedical cluster by integrating business processes with the scientific knowledge and by enhancing coordination between research and economic agents in the area.
The project will produce a pathway for coordination of support for a biomedical innovation economy in an underdeveloped area, the Lowcountry of South Carolina, Charleston, and the surrounding region. Contributing to the broadening of access and impact is that fact that the College of Charleston is primarily an undergraduate institution. It is a liberal arts and sciences Masters only institution, with an undergraduate population of approximately 65% women, which aims to bring science and business experiences to its students.
Partners at the inception of the project are Academic Institutions: College of Charleston (SC) (lead institution), University of Louisville (KY); and Medical University of South Carolina; Private Sector Organizations: Charleston Angel Partners (CHAP), InterTech Group, and South Carolina Research Authority; and State and Local Organizations: Charleston Regional Development Alliance, New Carolina, and the City of Charleston, through its Digital Corridor and Innovation Center.
In 2009 the giant pharmaceutical company Roche offered to by Genentech for $46.8 billion. Genentech is now often considered the founder of the biotechnology industry, but at one point in its history, Genentech was just one more start-up company, with all of the challenges facing a new venture. The biotechnology industry as a whole is one of the fastest growing sectors in the economy. This is especially true for that subset of biotechnology dealing with health-related issues, biomedical processes, new drug development, and new products for use in medical settings. Put these trends together with the fact that more than 80% of the new jobs created in the United States are created in companies with fewer than 20 employees, and it is easy to see the importance of entrepreneurship for biotechnology. The broad objectives of the Lowcountry Partnership for Biomedical Innovation were to (a) enhance the local biomedical infrastructure, (b) contribute to the entrepreneurial education of medical research students, (c) assist fledgling biomedical companies, and (d) identify crucial success factors for entrepreneurial start-up ventures. Over the life of the project several important outcomes have been achieved. A course on Health Sciences Entrepreneurship (ENTR 451) has been established at the College of Charleston. This course is cross-listed as Biomedical Commercialization (CGS 729) at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) and also cross-listed as Biomedical Technology Entrepreneurship (BIOE 850) at Clemson University. Students from all three schools have participated in interdisciplinary teams to create feasibility studies for products created in the medical research laboratories of MUSC. The project created a business presentation team for Sphingogene, a company that has invented compounds that can enhance the effectiveness of radiation therapy for cancer treatment. The presentation team represented Sphingogene in the Rady School of Management Student Venture Open, held in conjunction with the WBT Innovation Showcase in 2012. The team, consisting of graduate research students from MUSC and undergraduate business students from the College of Charleston, won this national competition (picture attached). Much of the project’s research on entrepreneurial characteristics is based on the Panel Studies of Entrepreneurial Dynamics (PSED), two nationally representative databases of people who are in the process of starting businesses. As part of the project’s enhancement of the entrepreneurial infrastructure generally, we have presented workshops on how to use this complex dataset. These workshops have been held in the US, France, and the UK for professional audiences of researchers and doctoral students. In addition, some of the workshop content has been published by project staff in the Journal of Business Strategy (ISSN 1081-8510, 2012, Vol. 22, No. 1, pages 99-115). In 2013 students in the ENTR 451 produced a complete proposal for an interdisciplinary and inter-institutional (College of Charleston and Medical University of South Carolina) undergraduate major in Healthcare Administration. This proposal has been shared with the upper administration of both institutions, as one possible way for the two to collaborate to enhance local economic development. It is a matter of faith among venture investors that the entrepreneurs most likely to succeed are going to be people who are the most highly motivated by a combination of the desire for financial success with a need for personal fulfillment. Research conducted by the project shows this "matter of faith" to be misplaced. Specifically, when entrepreneurs are in their thirties, the highest-scoring women are actually people who have quit; the highest-scoring men are people who are still trying, but have not successfully created new firms. The fact that "pick the highest-scoring" turns out to be a less-than-winning strategy may be related to the fact that venture capitalists have at least a 40% failure rate, despite selecting as their investment targets only a small percentage of the entrepreneurs they examine. In short, this is a critical place in the development of entrepreneurial business where a stereotype that "everybody knows" turns out to be very wrong. Finally, the project has begun to examine the institutional and organizational factors that either support or impede the successful commercialization of biomedical technology.
