Will Roche Spin Genentech Off Again?

Does Roche’s recent acquisition of Genentech mean the end of the big-biotech business model? Has Genentech lost it’s independence? Not so, if history decides to repeat itself.

Roche has already bought (and sold) Genentech once before. It’s not unimaginable to think that they’re using the current economic crisis to do another value-based flip. Using an excerpt from Building Biotechnology to illustrate, Roche pocketed several billion dollars when it bought and sold Genentech in 1999:

Source: Building Biotechnology

So, before you write-off Genentech, consider that Roche may simply decide to flip them again.

0 Comments/

96 Likes

/0 Tweets/in General Biotechnology

March 17, 2009

17 Mar 2009

Entrepreneurship: What Not to Do

I’ll be giving a talk at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School Entrepreneurship Conference on March 21st titled “Entrepreneurship: What Not to Do.” The talk will cover cases in failed entrepreneurship in biotechnology, elucidating some of the forseeable and unforseeable factors which can lead to failure.

Hope to see some readers there. If you can’t make it, you may want to check out “Beyond the Business Plan” or Building Biotechnology, on which this latest talk is based.

0 Comments/

0 Likes

/0 Tweets/in General Biotechnology, Talks and Publications

March 11, 2009

11 Mar 2009

Journal of Commercial Biotechnology — April 2009 Special Issue on Education

The April 2009 issue of the Journal of Commercial Biotechnology is now available. This special issue on education was guest-edited by Arlen Meyers.

The links below will take you to the abstract for each paper:

Volume 15, Issue 2

Editorial	PDF
Arlen Meyers

Articles

Integrating virtual internships into online classrooms	PDF
Richard Conroy, Rana Khan

The implementation of a proseminar course to lead change in the MS.MBA biotechnology programme at Johns Hopkins University	PDF
Lynn Johnson Langer

Creating bioentrepreneurs: How graduate student organisations foster science entrepreneurship	PDF
Justin T Brown, Andrew C Kant

Best practices for developing university bioentrepreneurship education programmes	PDF
Thomas Crispeels, Oliver Uecke, Marc Goldchstein, Michael Schefczyk