Session 6

This week began with another fascinating theme of BioBusiness revolution with focus on healthcare and biomedical sciences. In this session we learnt about what constitutes Bio Businesses. BioBusiness is the commercial activity based on understanding of life sciences and life sciences processes. It makes up about a quarter of world’s GDP and employs some 40% of labour force. However, most of this work force is employed in subsistence level farming. Hence, now BioBusiness is moving towards more sustainability and high value goods and services.

Then we looked at few trends in healthcare industry. It was realised that we are living in a world where millions and millions of people are dying of communicable/nutritional diseases. Such problem is more prevalent in south Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. The other more developed countries are also not immune to the same problem but there the incidence of chronic diseases is much higher.

Never did I realise that BioBusiness has end number of opportunities. Some areas of opportunities include agriculture and biotechnology, industrial and marine bio technology, pharmaceuticals and diagnostics.

One of the key concepts learnt in this week was concerning the type of opportunities. Any given opportunity may be categorised into Valley, Summit and Cloud opportunity. Valley opportunities involve many competitors and low barriers to entry. Meaning there is an existent market for a particular product/service.  Summit opportunities are more technology and knowledge intensive, there is less competition and innovative ways of businesses can be used to make high profit margins. Cloud opportunities are also technology and knowledge intensive, with few competitors but there are high barriers to entry. Innovation in this area is likely to be technology driven as it applies to adoption and promotion of technologies that are still emerging. Unlike cloud opportunities, Summit opportunities are usually market driven. The innovation in concern is in high demand.

In class discussion, it was realised that a business should invest resource sin summit opportunities and then should move towards cloud opportunities. The possibility of moving from valley to summit opportunity was also discussed. It may be achieved by adding value to the product/service by innovative means. For example, traditional medicines that had lost their popularity some time ago are now seen as summit opportunities.

Furthermore, discussion took place on issues such as innovation systems and intellectual property (IP). For instance, previously, companies would use IP to protect themselves from others and transfer of knowledge was hard. The purpose to innovate and solve issues was somewhat lost because things like patents simply become means of incurring more profits. But new IP involves more sharing of knowledge and stresses on collaboration. This results in better access to products and more innovation. I think this is very significant to our present world as it may be one of the keys to solve many problems such as prevention of many preventable diseases and communicable diseases in less developing nations.

Besides that in healthcare industry, there is a move towards wellness management versus disease management. Also, there is a shift towards personal responsibility of health rather than state responsibility. We are seeing technologies such as diabetes glucose meters which save a lot of time and money. There is no more need to go to hospitals regularly to get the glucose tests done. This positive change/trend is best described by a video by Microsoft. Hence, I would put the link here, instead of talking about it. Video says it all - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x74reJmMzV4&feature=related

The video is very interesting as it highlights the possible future of healthcare and wellness management. I see it as becoming possible in our near future. Do you?

My personal rating of this session is 8/10. I am just a bit curious about the negative impacts/consequences of technology in this area as to me everything seems very positive :)