Author: Eva Regårdh

Eva Regårdh wrote:

On March 29 MIT arranged a round table seminar entitled “The Future of Manufacturing Innovation—Advanced Technologies.” The seminar focused on technological advances that could spur manufacturing in the U.S.

MIT president Susan Hockfield opened the afternoon by reflecting on the status of the U.S. as a manufacturing nation. “Many Americans tend to believe that hardly anything is made in the U.S. anymore, and that all manufacturing has moved to China or other countries with low wages,” she said. ”But by reinventing manufacturing capabilities and processes, the U.S. could create 17 to 20 million new jobs.”

Is this realistic? Can Western countries with high-paid jobs really compete with countries like China and India where the cost of labor is lower?

“Yes. Just look at Germany and Japan,” Hockfield said.

Coming from Sweden with a background in engineering, and having covered European industry for many years for publications such as VerkstadsForum, Verkstäderna, and Automation, I believe that Hockfield may be right, but that the United States has much to do in order stay competitive. Just look at the figures: in 2009 the U.S had a trade deficit of almost $227 billion with China alone, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s foreign trade statistics. Over the last three years, 10 percent of the U.S. manufacturing workforce was laid off, MIT political scientist Suzanne Berger pointed out at the seminar.

While I don’t mean to sound like a preachy outsider, a number of practices that I’ve observed from my time covering European manufacturers, particularly in my native Scandinavia, could be useful as the United States seeks to rebuild or reinforce its own manufacturing infrastructure.

Consistent information handling during a product’s entire lifecycle is an often underestimated but vital component if we want to keep manufacturing profitable. Being able to master small batch production, even of complex and high-tech goods, in order to meet individual customers needs, is another key to staying competitive.  This is easier said than done. America is adapted to economies of scale, a tradition dating back to the days of Henry Ford. Certainly the U.S. has a huge home market, but this has probably delayed the adoption of small, efficient batch manufacturing essential in smaller countries and markets, such as the Nordic ones.

Once that is mastered, customization becomes, if not easy, at least more achievable. Customization, in turn, demands consistent information, with software solutions holding and updating product data correctly, through the product’s entire life cycle. Systems that can do this must …Next Page »

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UNDERWRITERS AND PARTNERS

Eva Regårdh wrote:

Emerging markets present an important opportunity for U.S. pharmaceutical and biotechnology firms. This was one of the take-home messages from the annual MIT Sloan BioMedical BioInnovations conference, which drew about 250 people to the Marriot Hotel in Cambridge last Friday.

In a panel discussion, Jonathan Fleming, the managing general partner of Oxford Bioscience Partners, said that now, with cell phones penetrating deeply into the emerging markets, it is time for the pharmaceutical industry to catch up. “To be able to send a picture or a short video to a doctor who is remote is really valuable in this market. All innovations in this area are of vital interest. But it must be taken to the grassroots, to make it cheap, easy, and simple in order to reach out to practitioners.”

Fleming also said that the biotech and pharmaceutical industries must focus more on infrastructure and delivery methods, rather than on just developing new products. Ben Rymzo, a principle at The Frankel Group, pointed out that while the EU and U.S. economies have slowed, the pharmaceutical and biotech industries have demonstrated tremendous growth potential in emerging countries such as China, India, and Brazil. Biotech revenue growth in China alone is projected to exceed 25 percent within the next five years. However, the panel agreed that these emerging markets are different from established markets, and require country-specific strategies.

The consensus of the panel was that business opportunities in the emerging markets have higher growth potential than those in the developed world. But to succeed, life sciences companies must focus on:

• leveraging molecular structures to enable inexpensive innovations
• competing more effectively with generic solutions
• developing more effective supply and distribution chains

Other highlights of the conference included a post-lunch speaker by legendary entrepreneur Robert Langer, an Institute professor at MIT, who addressed a packed auditorium at the Marriot. Langer gave some history on a few of the scores of companies he has co-founded, including MicroCHIPS (medical implants), BIND Biosciences (highly targeted nanoparticle-based drugs) and Momenta Pharmaceuticals (structural analysis and development of complex sugars and compounds). With about 750 patents issued and pending, Langer offered some strategies for successfully blocking patents, chief among them making one’s own patents as broad as possible.

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Eva Regårdh wrote:

MIT’s Kirsch Auditorium was filled to its last seat as over 300 people showed up at the MIT Enterprise Forum Wednesday evening. The topic: “Accelerating Startup Growth: Seed Funding, Incubation and Mentorship Models.”

“You don’t know what you don’t know when you start a company for the first time,” said Laura Fitton, the founder of Twitter app store oneforty who’s often called the “Queen” of Twitter. “You just have this great idea but don’t know anything about marketing, fund raising, investors, regulations, IP. That’s why a structured program is so good for newborn entrepreneurs.”

Fitton herself was happy to be taken aboard by TechStars, which was founded by David Cohen, one of the speakers at the event. TechStars runs a highly structured three-month program for seed-stage startups, putting the entrepreneur straight into a fertile working environment.

“TechStars packs into three months what would take one or two years to achieve in the wild,” said Cohen. “We bring the participants into the innovation ecosystem. About half the startup companies won’t be recognizable after the program. The other half will no longer exist.”

Dave McClure, another investor, oversees the Founders Fund seed-stage investment program, which also focuses on investing in smaller startups. He explained that the cost of launching and funding many startups has decreased, so funds should adjust accordingly and back more companies for the same total amount of money invested.

“The ability to make money on the Internet is good,” said McClure, “especially for consumer-oriented software, like apps for Android and iPhone. Other common entrepreneurial ideas swing around data collecting and data sharing in different forms.”

“I see no shortage of ideas,” McClure added. “Beyond lack of experience, the problem for many entrepreneurs is to find a business model that easily scales up the distribution.”

Lack of experience presumably comes with the territory for many entrepreneurs. Gabor Garai, a partner at the law firm Foley & Lardner who has devoted his career to the legal aspects of investment and entrepreneurship, offered these tips for everybody with a great idea but not a lot of experience running a business:

• Focus on the business.
• Learn to handle crisis.
• Keep a simple structure.
• Don’t worry about core people leaving the team—it will happen sooner or later.
• Don’t bother too much about IP or the dilution an investor wants—it’s not about the slice of the pie, but the pie size.
• Don’t invest energy on issues such as how to cut taxes, etc; it only fragments your focus.

Finally, the panel agreed that business plans are often over-engineered.

“I don’t care much for business plans,” said McClure. “I look for energy, for passion, and a market.”

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