Technology Transfer and Entrepreneurship (Discontinued) - Volume 3, Issue 2, 2016

Academic research projects aimed at integrating interdisciplinary research fields are being implemented at universities and research institutions. The present study focuses on action-based research through two examples of academic interdisciplinary research projects, with the objective of observing institutional activities and validating their effectiveness. First, we generated a managerial framework for institutional activities from the perspective of resource and communication management. Then we conducted a set of surveillances in these two projects to understand the researcher’s activity of each project. Based on these facts, we tried to identify effective factors for the promotion of interdisciplinary research projects through: (i) descriptive statistical analyses across research institutions on the preference of communication partners, communication element and organisational complementation and the transaction of resources and organisation process, and (ii) cause-effect analyses on the performance of communication opportunities and the preference of communication management, setting a bibliometric interdisciplinary index to a dependent variable. The analytical approach we have proposed in this study could help to rationalise the management of academic interdisciplinary research projects. Further, it could also be applied widely to project management and to benchmarking and evaluation of the academic research project.

Recognizing venture capital as a crucial source of funds for life science start-ups, this review paper focuses on the academic literature on venture capitalists’ decision-making process on granting funding to early-stage, high-tech ventures. This review identified the following three issues: First, despite three dominant factors in venture capitalists’ decision-making process, which are identified to be the human, technological and financial aspects of the potential start-up, a great variety of further factors exists and generalization to a great extent is difficult. Secondly, little research has been conducted in Europe and little research employed inductive, qualitative methods. Thirdly, the latest study focusing on a ranking of the importance of decision-making factors for venture capitalists lies 29 years in the past and has been conducted with a North-American sample, leaving a gap for future research in Europe.

Of late, high-tech startups have been assuming increasing importance as a means of net employment generation, economic transformation and growth in the global economy. Among the emerging economies, India has been assuming increasing significance as a hub for high-tech startups, contributed among others by transnational entrepreneurs. Given this context, it is important to understand the key phases of the startup lifecycle and the corresponding challenges that entrepreneurs face in each of those phases. Once these challenges are understood, it is essential to understand the different ways in which entrepreneurs deal with these challenges and overcome them. With this background, this paper primarily examines the three important phases of high-tech startup lifecycle – emergence, survival and growth, in the context of transnational entrepreneurs as against local entrepreneurs, based on six case studies, two each for the three different phases. The case studies revealed the strategies adopted by the transnational entrepreneurs vis-à-vis local entrepreneurs with respect to market access, funding and role of Top Management Team (TMT) in the three different phases of startup lifecycle. Our findings indicate that if the local entrepreneur is as ‘resourceful’ as the transnational entrepreneur, the former need not lag behind and suffer relative to the latter, in dealing with the key challenges involved across the lifecycle of high-tech startups.

Founded in 2006, Crown Bioscience is a premier drug discovery company providing cutting-edge translational platforms and world class drug discovery solutions for its biotech and pharmaceutical partners in dedicated therapeutic areas of oncology and metabolic diseases. With the successful development of the business, an innovation system has been built by the entrepreneur community of Crown Bioscience. This community includes all the founders and some top managers in Crown Bioscience. They have successively established a series of start-ups extending the venture territory of their parent company. All these firms constitute an open innovation system. Based on the case study of Crown Bioscience, we found that: (1) The core of the founding team, Dr. Alex Yue Wu, plays a critical role in the emerging of the entrepreneur community. His open all-win mind guarantees the prosperity of this community. (2) One parent start-up, dominating a right position in the industry value chain, can cultivate rich opportunities for the community. (3) Knowledge sharing and learning by entrepreneurship in the community are drivers for dynamic capability building.

In response to the daily repeated supply chain of soft drink under uncertain demand, we apply the real options approach to a flexible production amount. A supplier can exercise call and put options in order to modulate between the demands and efficiency of a supplier’s productive capacity. First, we examine the impact on the option value (OV) between the three-stage cycle and the multi-stage for a one-year duration using Monte-Carlo simulation. The comparison shows that the options with multi-stage can increase the value. The reason is that the former options are only optimized within each three short stages, while the latter options are totally optimized in one year. Next on options with multi-stage, we examine the impact of the ratio of the exercisable option quantity to the demand on the OV. The OV can be gradually increased in proportion to a larger ratio, but the growth ratio is gradually reduced. Our study shows that options can yield OV in proportion to both a continuous number of stage and volume of exercised quantity.

In addition to many need-pull innovations, a type of rare basic-research-push innovation is biopharmaceutical development. In reflecting next generation innovation, the NASDAQ Biotechnology Index (NBI) is actually moving stronger in comparison with other indicators. From the industry’s high dependence on basic research, biotech start-up, which is more excellent in combing breakthrough technologies and niche markets than the mass market and low risk-oriented large pharmaceutical companies are expected as a major driver of the innovation chain. However, from the prolonging period of pharmaceutical development, expansion of necessary investment, low possibility of success, and severe resource constraints, a drug discovery-based biotech start-up must endure the ‘Valley of Death’ as a long-term deficit state in addition to the high bankruptcy rate. Why can a biotech start-up that suffers from long-term deficits even in the financial crisis continue research and development investment? If so, what kind of criteria for investment can be utilized? Biotech start-up is defined as the portfolio of real options. As methodologies, this paper applies the real options concept to the assessment of the stockholders’ equity as technological potential and Bayesian MCMC to the parameter estimation between the net income, shareholders' equity value, and R costs of representative 30 companies in the NBI.

Priority Review Vouchers are FDA incentive programs for stimulating research into rare pediatric and neglected tropical diseases. Upon successful approval of a new drug application or new biologic license application for a target rare/neglected disease, the sponsor is awarded a voucher. This voucher may then be applied to shorten the review time of any subsequent drug/biologic application. The voucher can also be sold for use by another drug sponsor. These programs have been controversial and subject to criticism. In order to supplement current reviews of the programs, we have undertaken a quantitative analysis of the programs’ efficacy. Through interviews and examination of available data, we have observed an increase in drug approval, significant interest in the intended research areas as well as some modest investment since program establishment. Despite the increase in the use of these vouchers, there is no evidence of a decrease in the FDA’s ability to respond to drug applications in a timely manner. Taken together, we conclude that the programs appear to be on track to stimulate research and development for the targeted rare/neglected indications. Because of the long cycle of drug development, more time is needed before a conclusion can be made on whether the programs have met their stated goals. Finally, we offer suggestions for improvement to the program.