Postgraduate Course: Biobusiness (PGSP11331)
Course Outline
| School | School of Social and Political Science |
College | College of Humanities and Social Science |
| Course type | Standard |
Availability | Available to all students |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Credits | 20 |
| Home subject area | Postgrad (School of Social and Political Studies) |
Other subject area | None |
| Course website |
None |
Taught in Gaelic? | No |
| Course description | A number of regions across the world are considered to be at the forefront of life science research. When it comes to the commercial exploitation of bioscience and biotechnology, however, the results are often disappointing. Often the approach adopted consists of attempts to turn scientists into entrepreneurs by providing them with basic training in business, (planning, small business finance and patent/licensing strategy) and showing them how these can be used in combination with their scientific skills.
While teaching scientists how to exploit commercial opportunities constitutes a legitimate motivation for business training, the ambition and target audience of this course are much wider. Turning science into innovative products and services requires not only basic training in business but also a more fundamental understanding of how scientific advances contribute to, and influence, industrial structures, innovation, and the dynamics of collaboration and competition at the level of the single industrial sector. Furthermore, in the context of the bioeconomy, innovation processes interact with, and can be shaped by, existing and evolving institutions and social attitudes and perceptions. Finally, this point of view is required not only by scientists, but also by a wider group of professionals working for government, industry and public research organisations.
This course is designed to provide students with a comprehensive overview of and the ability to assess how innovation in the life sciences is changing production methods, industrial structures, market dynamics and strategic decision making. To fully grasp these issues inevitably involves tackling the complex ethical and legal issues that individuals and society face as a result of these changes. |
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
| Additional Costs | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
| Displayed in Visiting Students Prospectus? | No |
Course Delivery Information
|
| Delivery period: 2013/14 Semester 2, Available to all students (SV1)
|
Learn enabled: Yes |
Quota: 26 |
|
Web Timetable |
Web Timetable |
| Course Start Date |
13/01/2014 |
| Breakdown of Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Lecture Hours 20,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
176 )
|
| Additional Notes |
|
| Breakdown of Assessment Methods (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
|
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
1. The course aims to attract students, scientists and professionals from a wide range of disciplines (biology, management, humanities and social sciences, engineering, healthcare, chemistry, neuroscience, pharmacology) and backgrounds (academia, health services administration, government and business). It will investigate the systemic character of discoveries in the life sciences, developments in medical and information technology, advances in areas such as agro-bio, bio-fuels and bio-materials, and how these changes are reshaping the bioeconomy critical fields such as healthcare, agriculture and ¿green economy¿. Emphasis will be placed on the analysis of specific contemporary matters such as structural change in pharmaceutical drug R&D, the emergence of new methods of knowledge translation in the medical arena, and the variety of ways in which risk capital supports bio-related innovation.
2. By the end of this course, students will have a critical understanding of policy, economic and social issues shaping innovation in the life sciences and hence reshaping a number of industrial sectors. They will learn some fundamental tools of business analysis in the context of a systemic approach that integrates the operation of the firm itself with the enabling and constraining policy and social factors that are key to determining technology outcomes. Using these tools, students will develop their ability to analyse industrial trends, examine competitive and collaborative strategies, compare business development trajectories, and assess human resource management techniques. In particular, the biobusiness course will focus on the Innogen approach to value system analysis will provide an over-arching interdisciplinary integrative approach to management of the complexities of life science innovation in areas such as healthcare, agriculture and bio-energy.
3. ¿ Be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of Industry/Product life cycle analysis. Students will develop a critical understanding of the theories and concepts about the different phases through which an industry normally evolves and how production and commercial strategy can be organised to meet the competitive challenges posed by each phase.
¿ Have the skills to apply a range of techniques for the analysis of small business finance, including the application of different funding models will be analysed in the context of various sub-sectors of the bioeconomy.
4. ¿ Possess extensive, detailed and critical knowledge of different business development methods in the context of various sub-sectors of the bioeconomy. This will involves developing awareness of the strategic motives behind the adoption of alternative techno-scientific trajectories (e.g. manufacturing drugs using traditional biology vs. synthetic platforms) and effect of such decision on the strategy of a specific firm and dynamics of an entire sector.
¿ Assess complex issues associated with maximising private profit in conjunction with social benefits involving different forms of collaboration that transcend arm-length market transactions (including various forms of public-private partnerships, hybrid models of knowledge translation, and various types of strategic alliance).
¿ Be effective communicators about critical aspects of strategic management in sectors characterised by complex ethical and legal issues of which there are many in the bioeconomy, if not in all sectors.
5. ¿ Plan and execute a strategic analysis of options for open innovation examined from the alternative perspectives of open source, open innovation, knowledge markets, and closed approaches to intellectual property and knowledge management. These will be understood in terms of the need for firms to make strategic decisions involving internal and external sources of knowledge to advance a firm¿s technological capacity.
¿ Be able to use special knowledge and skills related to human capital management, and knowledge workers, including how organisations translate human capital into intellectual capital, recognise their firms¿ competence base and organisational capacity, and integrate these factors into a strategy for marketable products and services. |
Assessment Information
| Assessment will consist of a shorter written assignment of 1,000 words (counting 30% of total assessment) and a final essay of 3,000 words (counting 70%) on a topic to be agreed between the student and the course convener. |
Special Arrangements
| None |
Additional Information
| Academic description |
Not entered |
| Syllabus |
WEEK TOPIC
1 Introduction to Biobusiness and Innovation in (Bio)pharmaceuticals
2 Interdisciplinary Methodology for Analysing Life Science Innovation Systems (ALSIS): Application to Regenerative Medicine
3 Knowledge Networks, Markets and Open Innovation in Life Sciences
4 Biobusiness in Emerging Economies: The Case of Indian Pharmaceuticals
5 Translational Medicine and the 'Broken Middle' of the Health Innovation Pathway
6 New Organisational Models for Health R&D: Public-Private Partnerships in Both High and Low Resource Settings
7 Creating and Exploiting Viable Business Models for 'Stratified Medicine'
8 Synthetic Biology
9 Innovation in Industrial Biotechnology: The Case of Biofuels
10 Animal biotechnology - Does a Controversial Technology have a Commercial Future? |
| Transferable skills |
Not entered |
| Reading list |
Avnimelech G. and M. Teubal, 2006, ¿Creating VC industries which co-evolve with High Tech: Insights from an Extended Industry Life Cycle (ILC) perspective to the Israeli Experience¿, Research Policy, 15, no. 4-5: 289-299
Castle D (2009), The Role of Intellectual Property Rights in Biotechnology Innovation, Edward Elgar Publisher, Cheltenham UK/Northampton USA
Chataway J and Wield D (2006), ¿The Governance of Agro- and Pharmaceutical Biotechnology Innovation: Public Policy and Industrial Strategy, Technology Analysis & Strategic Management, 18 (2), 169¿185.
Chataway J, Tait J and Wield D (2007) ¿Frameworks for Pharmaceutical Innovation in Developing Countries - The Case of Indian Pharma¿ Technology Analysis and Strategic Management,19 (5), 697-708.
Chataway J, Tait J, Wield, D (2004) Understanding company R&D strategies in agro-biotechnology: trajectories and blind spots, Research Policy, 33 (6-7), 1041-1057.
Cooke P (2007), Growth Cultures: The global bioeconomy and its bioregions, London and N. Y.: Routledge.
DiMasi J.A, Hansen R.W and Grabowski H.G, 2003, The Price of Innovation: New Estimates of Drug Development Costs, Journal of Health Economics, 22, 151-185.
Gompers P and Lerner J (2001), The Venture Capital Revolution, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 15(2), 145-168
Haffner M.E, 2006, Adopting Orphan Drugs ¿ Two Dozen Years of Treating Rare Diseases, The New England Journal of Medicine, 354, 445-447.
International Food Policy Research Institute (2006). Bioenergy and Agriculture: Promises and Challenges. 2020 Vision for Food, Agriculture, and the Environment: Focus 14, December 2006; available at http://www.ifpri.org/2020/focus/focus14/focus14.pdf
Kola I. and Landis J, 2004, Can the pharmaceutical industry reduce attrition rates?, Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, 3, 711-716.
Milne C.P, 2002, Orphan Drugs, Pain Relief for Clinical Development Headaches, Nature Biotechnology, 20, 780-784.
Milne, C.P. and Tait, J., 2009, Evolution along the Government-Governance Continuum: FDA¿s Orphan Products and Fast Track Programs as Exemplars of ¿What Works¿ for Innovation and Regulation, Food and Drug Law Journal, 64(4), 733-753.
Mittra J (2008), Impact of the life sciences on organisation and management of R&D in large pharmaceutical firms, IJBT, 10(5) 416-440.
Mittra J and Tait J (2010) From maturity to value-added innovation: lessons from the pharmaceutical and agro-biotechnology industries, Trends in Biotechnology, 29(3), 105-109.
Northrup J, 2005, The pharmaceutical sector. In: Burns R L (Ed), The Business of Healthcare Innovation, Cambridge University Press
Pardridge, W, M. (2003) ¿Translational Science: What is it and Why is it so Important?¿ Drug Discovery Today, 18, 813-815
Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology (2001) Harvest on the Horizon: Future Uses of Agricultural Biotechnology, available at http://pewagbiotech.org/research/harvest/harvest.pdf
Pisano G. P., 2006, The Science Business: The Promise, the Reality, and the Future of Biotech, Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
Porter K Whittington K B Powell W W., 2005, ¿The Institutional Embeddedness of High-Tech Regions: Relational Foundations of the Boston Biotechnology Community¿, in eds S Breschi and F Malerba, Clusters, Networks, and Innovation, Oxford University Press
Rasmussen B, 2010, Innovation and Commercialisation in the Biopharmaceutical Industry, Edward and Elgar, Cheltenham (UK) and Northampton MA (USA).
Rosiello A, and Parris S (2009) ¿The patterns of venture capital investment in the UK bio-healthcare sector: the role of proximity, cumulative learning and specialisation¿, Venture Capital, an International Journal in Entrepreneurial Finance, Volume 11, Issue 3, 185-212.
Rothaermel FT and Deeds DL (2004) Exploration and exploitation alliances in biotechnology: a system of new product development, Strategic Management Journal, 15, 201-221.
Schimd E. F and Smith A, (2005) Is Declining Innovation in the Pharmaceutical Industry a Myth? Drug Discovery Today, 10 (15), 1031-1038.
Tait. J (2007), Systemic Interactions in Life Science Innovation. Technology Analysis and Strategic Management, 19(3), 257-277, May 2007.
UN-Energy (2007) Sustainable Bioenergy: A Framework for Decision Makers, available at http://esa.un.org/un-energy/pdf/susdev.Biofuels.FAO.pdf.
Vertès, A.A., Inui, M. & Yukawa, H. (2006) Implementing biofuels on a global scale, Nature Biotechnology 24, 761¿764. |
| Study Abroad |
Not entered |
| Study Pattern |
This 20 credit course will be delivered through a 10 week lecture and seminar discussion format. The weekly two-hour sessions will typically consist of a short lecture (introducing the key themes of the week¿s topic and the core readings provided), followed by an hour and a quarter of classroom discussion, student-led presentations, and case study work.
Each week¿s class will typically cover conceptual, theoretical and empirical material related to the topic, and substantive use will be made of case-study material emerging from recent research findings of the teaching staff. |
| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Alessandro Rosiello
Tel: (0131 6)50 6393
Email: Alessandro.Rosiello@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Miss Jade Birkin
Tel: (0131 6)51 1569
Email: Jade.Birkin@ed.ac.uk |
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