The business of science

摘要

Given the challenges of commercialisation, Ian Siragher started to wonder: How does science ev< get turned into a workable business? It turns out there is more than one kind of operator at the science/business interface Business isn't rocket science. A business identifies a product, sources it, tells customers about it, agrees a price, delivers the product, collects the cash, covers the costs (hopefully) and starts again. There are plenty of challenges, and plenty of surprises along the way, but usually those surprises and challenges fail into the category of "known unknowns". Science on the other hand if not exactly rocket science every time, is science. Science begins with unknowns and works to identity hidden truths. Those truths can be the foundation of great products. But the path from thought to delivery is always difficult. At the early stages, the customer, product, price, delivery mechanism, cash availability and so on, is all unknown: the unknown unknowns outweigh the businessperson's unknowns ten to one.