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From Breakthrough to Blockbuster: The Business of Biotechnology
Financial Times Business Top Title March 2022
How could a large collection of small companies, most with fewer than 50 employees, rise to compete with Big Pharma, one of the world's most breathtakingly expensive and highly regulated industries?
Beginning in the 1970s, several scientific breakthroughs promised to transform the creation of new medicines. As investors sought to capitalize on these Nobel Prize-winning discoveries, the biotech industry grew to thousands of small companies around the world. Each sought to emulate what the major pharmaceutical companies had been doing for a century or more, but without the advantages of scale, scope, experience, and massive resources.
Biotech companies have met the challenge by creating nearly 40% more of the most important treatments for previously unmet medical needs. Moreover, they have done so with much lower overall costs.
From Breakthrough to The Business of Biotechnology focuses on both the companies themselves and the broader biotech ecosystem that supports them. It paints a portrait of the crucial roles played by academic research, venture capital, contract research organizations, the capital markets, and pharmaceutical companies, demonstrating how a supportive environment enabled the entrepreneurial biotech industry to create novel medicines with unprecedented efficiency. In doing so, it also offers insights for any industry seeking to innovate in uncertain and ambiguous conditions.
How could a large collection of small companies, most with fewer than 50 employees, rise to compete with Big Pharma, one of the world's most breathtakingly expensive and highly regulated industries?
Beginning in the 1970s, several scientific breakthroughs promised to transform the creation of new medicines. As investors sought to capitalize on these Nobel Prize-winning discoveries, the biotech industry grew to thousands of small companies around the world. Each sought to emulate what the major pharmaceutical companies had been doing for a century or more, but without the advantages of scale, scope, experience, and massive resources.
Biotech companies have met the challenge by creating nearly 40% more of the most important treatments for previously unmet medical needs. Moreover, they have done so with much lower overall costs.
From Breakthrough to The Business of Biotechnology focuses on both the companies themselves and the broader biotech ecosystem that supports them. It paints a portrait of the crucial roles played by academic research, venture capital, contract research organizations, the capital markets, and pharmaceutical companies, demonstrating how a supportive environment enabled the entrepreneurial biotech industry to create novel medicines with unprecedented efficiency. In doing so, it also offers insights for any industry seeking to innovate in uncertain and ambiguous conditions.
240 pages, Hardcover
Published April 29, 2022
About the author
Donald L. Drakeman
13 booksProfessor at the University of Notre Dame, Fellow at the Centre for Health Leadership at the University of Cambridge.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 4, 2026
Biotechnology is a hot topic in today's global economy. It promises to help humanity, so it often receives startup funding from governments. Success stories show the strong financial potential of the right investments. Big pharmaceutical companies ("big pharma") can purchase entire companies for large amounts of profits. Yet the risks are great, with an estimated 90% of ventures ending in non-successful outcomes. There seems little that can be done to predict success from the outset. This book offers hard knowledge for business folk to make smarter decisions whatever their role in the industry.
The authors present data that show, in drug development, a decentralized approach driven by small biotech companies is more successful than a centralized approach driven by big pharma. Even a host of support companies have grown up, called contract research organizations or CROs, to manage various parts of the drug discovery process. The main challenge of a newer biotech firm is to continually drum up enough money to keep going.
However, when drumming up money, firms can attract investors with their own agendas. Short-term investors are more interested in flipping a quick profit and thus are more interested in successful press than a successful product. CEOs must manage investor expectations and opinions as a prime job responsibility. It's easy for the drug, with all their promise for patients and profits, to fall into the background to pecuniary concerns.
I'm involved in healthcare via informatics in a university setting. This book offered me a greater understanding of the challenges my colleagues face with drug development. Obviously, the topic is of huge interest for anyone involved first-hand in the medical system. This book offers a good summary for those interested the the financial angles, but like a lot of business books, it reduces the effort to a financial analysis. For readers, it successfully rips off any rose-colored glasses one might have towards investing in these companies. Such clairvoyance is needed when approaching investment, of money or of careers, in a venture as risky and new as biotechnology.
The authors present data that show, in drug development, a decentralized approach driven by small biotech companies is more successful than a centralized approach driven by big pharma. Even a host of support companies have grown up, called contract research organizations or CROs, to manage various parts of the drug discovery process. The main challenge of a newer biotech firm is to continually drum up enough money to keep going.
However, when drumming up money, firms can attract investors with their own agendas. Short-term investors are more interested in flipping a quick profit and thus are more interested in successful press than a successful product. CEOs must manage investor expectations and opinions as a prime job responsibility. It's easy for the drug, with all their promise for patients and profits, to fall into the background to pecuniary concerns.
I'm involved in healthcare via informatics in a university setting. This book offered me a greater understanding of the challenges my colleagues face with drug development. Obviously, the topic is of huge interest for anyone involved first-hand in the medical system. This book offers a good summary for those interested the the financial angles, but like a lot of business books, it reduces the effort to a financial analysis. For readers, it successfully rips off any rose-colored glasses one might have towards investing in these companies. Such clairvoyance is needed when approaching investment, of money or of careers, in a venture as risky and new as biotechnology.
June 24, 2026
Good for getting a grasp of the industry and the biotech business. Recommended for readers early in their career and anyone interested in the industry.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews