Thursday, March 31, 2005

Drug makers court small firms in push to fill thinning pipelines

Here is the link from the Boston Globe... link


this is a two page article...look for the term "nichebuster" on the second page...

There's a big shift in thinking hidden in that one word...for the economy, our projects, for what we find in our medicine cabinets...

I hope we are all keeping up with our "paradigm shifts"...

Wednesday, March 30, 2005

Saturday, March 26, 2005

Team memberships now available...or not...

We succeed or fail based on the efforts of those around us...

this had started out as "You suceed based on the efforts of those who support you..."
with commentary on where we find ourselves in the food chain chain, above some people, below others....this gives us a focus on what we should be doing...supporting the people above us...and being mindful of the people who work for us...

then it started spinning wildly out of control, ok, not wildly, but this lead to a bunch of other points, some of them even coherent...

What happens when you are at the top of the hiearchy? Is your entire chance at success based on others?...

What about being responsible for your own success?...I should be able to impact whether or not I succeed...I think individual (read "my") effort counts, anyway...

Blah, blah, blah....

let's finish up with some sort of rousing "Go Team!!!" sort of thing...

or not...

Thursday, March 24, 2005

India: Why Biotech's Bigger Than IT

from biospace.com

http://biospace.com/news_story.cfm?StoryId=19485220

just in case we didn't have enough competition here...

Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Biotech Corn Mistakenly Sold

from biospace.com

http://biospace.com/news_story.cfm?StoryId=19473720

Followup story...

Government held back infromation regarding sale of GM corn...

By Seth Borenstein, Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - The federal government kept it secret for three months that genetically modified corn seed was sold accidentally to some U.S. farms for four years and may have gotten into the American food supply.

The accidental use of unapproved seed became public when the scientific journal Nature published a story about it Tuesday.
The corn seed was probably safe. America's food supply and plant and animal stocks weren't harmed and remain safe to eat, according to officials of the seed company and the federal government.
But the government's secrecy about the mistake - one affecting the public food supply - raises serious concerns, according to independent experts.
Spokesmen for the Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency (news - web sites) said there was no need to notify the public because the government had determined that Bt 10 was safe. In addition, the USDA is investigating the whole incident involving the seed company, which faces up to $500,000 in fines, Agriculture Department spokesman Jim Rogers said.
"We're gathering evidence that we may need in front of a judge," Rogers said. "If there was a health risk, you would have heard about it and there would have been a recall."
Syngenta, a Swiss-based company, distributed the unapproved genetically altered corn seed, called
Bt 10. It mixed the Bt 10 with a near-identical and approved corn seed called Bt 11, company officials said Tuesday afternoon in a hastily called news conference. The Bt 10 was modified with a gene from the pesticide-like bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis.
"Most of the corn is used for industrial and animal use," Syngenta spokeswoman Sarah Hull said. "It may have gotten into the food supply, but regardless, the proteins are deemed safe and there's no food concern."
Remaining seeds have been destroyed or isolated, Hull said.
The unapproved seeds grew into 37,000 U.S. acres of corn over four years. That involves one-one-hundredth of 1 percent of the corn acreage in America, Hull said.
Sygenta's U.S. headquarters is in Greensboro, N.C. It runs its seed operation out of Golden Valley, Minn.
"I personally don't see it would be a major issue," said Kendall Lamkey, the head of Iowa State University's plant-breeding center.
But the way the federal government kept the mistake secret is alarming, Lamkey said, and may undermine public confidence in the growing field of genetically modified crops.
"The whole GMO (genetically modified organism) controversy surrounds a lack of transparency on both (the part of) the companies and regulatory agencies," said Lamkey, who served on a National Academy of Sciences (news - web sites) panel in 2002 on the environmental impact of genetically modified crops. "There's too much secrecy."
In mid-December, Syngenta told the EPA, the Agriculture Department and the Food and Drug Administration (news - web sites) about the mistake, Hull said.
EPA scientists reviewed seven packets of information from Syngenta from Jan. 7 to March 10, and "as more data came in, the confidence of our scientific determination (of no risk) increased," EPA spokeswoman Cynthia Bergman said in an e-mail. "Had there been a human health concern, we would have alerted the public immediately."

That's not acceptable, said Sheldon Krimsky, a Tufts University environmental-policy professor who's a longtime foe of genetically modified crops.
"They have both a moral and legal obligation to reveal violations," Krimsky said. "This is a government that's operating in a stealth manner that wants to keep bad news from the public."

Pfizer Inc. (PFE) To End Production At Michigan Plant And Sell Off The Facility

from biospace.com

http://biospace.com/news_story.cfm?StoryID=19463120

Sunday, March 20, 2005

"Smarter Conversations..."

Yeah, I know, some of us are still working our way up to "smart" conversations...

While maybe not the most coherent explanation...(it's early morning...)

I like the general premise that in an industry of similar situations, we can focus on "smarter" conversations...

The first hump is changing the perception that this is an "extra" activity to being central or even critical to succeeding...



"Thoughts on Smarter Conversations..." as excerpted from h macleod's gapingvoid.com site...

I have been hesitant to post the link for this...because we, after all, professionals...
(look for more links I like on my personal blog...)

so, just so you know... hugh macleod's blog contains vulgar language, and some vaguely offensive material...(some of you will just love it...) the rest of you may consider yourself warned...

http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/000939.html

Friday, March 18, 2005

Leading when you lose...

cheery thought, huh?...great way to start a post...

Things have been getting busy, which is good...
Lots of possibilities out there, which is also good...

so we bid away, and cross out fingers....hope fully we will win our share of the work...

inevitably, we will lose some of the projects we bid on...for any number of reasons...
and we work in a "winner take all..." business...no prizes for second place...

When you win, leadership is critical to accompliushing everything you commited to...
yeah, yeah, enough about leadership...like Angus said "All This Crap about Leadership..."

It's easy to lead when you're winning...

Leading when you've lost...that's the real challenge...getting a team to pick themselves up and move forward,... picking yourself up, for that matter...
what went wrong? what could we have done differently? etc. etc. etc.

That's when we see who the true leaders are...

uh, this is too depressing...

good luck to us all!!!

next topic please!!!

Thursday, March 17, 2005

Sunday, March 13, 2005

Did I miss the memo?

from biospace.com

Biotech: The Death of a Dream...

http://biospace.com/news_story.cfm?StoryId=19359620

The Lion Roars....

for all of you Nittany fans...(insert lion roar here...)

from biospace.com

New Tumor-Suppressor Gene Discover

http://biospace.com/news_story.cfm?StoryId=19357320

and what is a "Nittany", anyway?

Wednesday, March 09, 2005

Friday, March 04, 2005

Wednesday, March 02, 2005

FDA Drug Approval Times Likely To Grow; Biogen Drug Debacle May Drag Down Industry

link from biospace.com

http://biospace.com/news_story.cfm?StoryID=19222820

I saw this story covered on CNN the other day.

I thought they missed some important aspects regarding getting drugs to people who need them...by that I mean more than people who need arthritis medication when ibuprofen is already available...although I think I would have a hard timing selling that argument to someone with arthritis...

On the other hand, it's hard to justify people getting killed by their medicine...

Thinking about Operations...

I backed into thinking about "Operations" as an odd sort of afterthought regarding another design issue...

see link here http://jfdblog.blogspot.com/2005/03/living-historyand-stage-set-design.html from my other blog...

It occurred to me that Operations is treated as an afterthought all too often...

We design every aspect of a facility...do we evaluate it's operation as carefully?

We estimate facility costs in great detail...do we estimate operation costs?

I wonder if our clients could benefit from this type of information?...I think our clients could benefit from a sharper focus on Operations...