The next step was to use the miracle of word processing to take this virtual job description and turn it into a letter. I had interviewed a new type of organization-biotechnology centers-for my Science article. In 1985, there were only two centers of any repute, the Maryland Biotechnology Institute and the North Carolina Biotechnology Center (NCBC).
I wrote a letter to each of them telling them that if they would invest in me and my Biotechnology Information Program as a new division of their centers, then the Program would bring them international attention, provide a great resource to the community they serve, and ultimately bring in some funding for the research we could do with the possibility of someday becoming self-sufficient. As it turns out, the Maryland Biotechnology Institute was mostly creative publicity at the time, but NCBC was real and very eager to talk. They had only eight employees at the time and more money than they could spend. Timing is everything.
We talked, my wife and I moved to Durham, and the Biotechnology Information Program was born at NCBC. I left for-profit, large industry for a small, state-funded, private, not-for-profit organization. In retrospect, all of the things I put in my letter selling the program to them have come to pass-and more. The Program evolved into the Institute for Biotechnology Information in 1992 to give it an aura of a separate entity, even though it was still a division of the Center. I was director of IBI and a vice president of the Center.
We had 9 employees in IBI and an international reputation. The databases grew tremendously and we sold them. We collected data and published them as directories. We were asked by companies to do special studies for them. And we were asked to serve as government contractors and subcontractors to complete studies. The library had grown to be what was arguably the best public library in the world for commercial biotechnology. The biotechnology center got the attention it sought, along with some income, and was able to provide a tremendous resource to the community it served.
While at NCBC, I was able to pursue four other things I enjoy very much. First, I was able to teach. As another example of timing, my moving to North Carolina coincided with the firing of a nonproductive faculty member of Duke University's Fuqua School of Business. I met with the Dean to see if I could teach perhaps an occasional lecture and walked out an Adjunct Associate Professor teaching one or two courses each year in management of technology and, more recently, entrepreneurship. I have been with Duke for 12 years now. I had previously taught courses in Denver and San Diego during my post-docs, but had never taught graduate students. My fellowship at Wharton and my lead articles in Science led them to believe I knew what I was doing.
The second thing I was able to do at NCBC was to continue to write and publish. While there, I authored 4 books, 2 on U.S. biotechnology and 2 on Japanese biotechnology. We were doing numerous studies and I was able to publish about 50 papers during those years, mostly on commercial biotechnology. Working for NCBC, I did not have to account for my hours to be financially productive, so I could take the studies we were doing and follow through with published articles.
The third thing was to continue to travel and make presentations about my work. I lecture about 15 times each year at a national or international venue. I enjoy lecturing and it helped me spread the word about our work to thousands of people each year. Like the publishing, it was a form of free marketing, and getting out and about was great for networking.
Networking is the fourth important skill I was able to build during my years at NCBC. My boss, Dr. Charles Hamner, President of NCBC, was an excellent mentor. He was happy to have us spread the word about NCBC at meetings, with societies, wherever. I joined the Board of Directors of the Association of Biotechnology Companies. I founded the national Council of Biotechnology Centers and served as its chairman, I got involved with the Drug Information Association, running the Biotechnology Track at their annual meeting, I gave keynote lectures to countless societies and groups, I served on National Research Council Working Groups, I was on three editorial boards of industry journals, I was on the boards of directors of two companies. I networked.
During my eight years at NCBC, our IBI group also grew and established many ties. We worked for an increasing number of clients. We created more than 20 published books and directories. We were quoted frequently. Our abilities to do market research, competitor analysis, technology assessments, international studies and a panoply of special research projects grew. This was a team effort of people with great abilities.
It was nice working for someone else who was supportive and nurturing, as both the Center and Dr. Hamner were. But IBI was growing into its own entity and approaching self-sufficiency. The state legislature also realized this. They saw that NCBC had a division that was actually bringing in money.
At the beginning of 1993, they gave Dr. Hamner a mandate to make IBI self-sufficient within 5 years. He, in turn, gave me 3 years to accomplish this goal. We talked and agreed that if he gave me 1 year to plan and prepare, I would take IBI as a private, for-profit company. This had benefits all around-the Center got to beat the mandate from the legislature by 4 years, it got to spin off a company for the first time, which would help satisfy its mandate of creating jobs and revenues related to biotechnology. I had confidence that IBI could succeed as a company. I was ready to become an entrepreneur.
Entrepreneurship
The Institute for Biotechnology Information, LLC was launched in July 1994 as a new company owned by my wife and myself (and financed through re-mortgaging our house). We took three people from our group at NCBC and hired two others to begin the new company. A contract was drafted giving IBI 3 years' of work from NCBC to continue to provide some of the information services we had been supplying internally. We had to leave the library behind, as it was a showplace and attracted considerable attention. But the Center was bound to maintain the library for 5 years and could not compete in providing information services for profit for that time. IBI moved to new, modest digs nearby in Research Triangle Park.
IBI provides strategic business information in biotechnology and pharmaceuticals to a wide variety of clients, from government agencies to biotechnology firms to large corporations. About one-fifth of our income comes from sales of products-four books, a monthly journal, and our databases (if the reader is interested, details can be found at http://www. biotechinfo.com).
Four-fifths of our income comes from special studies, which vary widely in nature and scope. For example, at the time of this writing, active projects include a market research study in Egypt, creating a database for a client, writing a complete business plan for a new company, a market research study, an international data collection project, collecting financial information on selected companies, and a few others.
We have also begun to focus in areas of pharma-co-economics (as a joint project with the world leader in this field), regional development (we work for states and regions to help plan their development of commercial biotechnology) and business plan writing.
IBI has grown in its first 3 years from 6 to 14 employees. We are growing slowly but steadily. The three strengths we have are our resources, such as internal and external books and databases, our reputation and networking, and our people. IBI was created to be a team of people with complementary skills who could work well as a team. The majority of our staff has advanced graduate degrees. Three of us have Ph.D.'s, two have MBAs, and others have an assortment of Masters Degrees.
What we provide, in a nutshell, is strategic business information. The main strengths we bring are the strengths I described in my lengthy sojourn through my career. They are the ability to design scientific research, the ability to write and edit, the ability to teach (clients), and the ability to network for both new business development and information gathering.
With the excellent level of personnel availability in the Research Triangle Park area of North Carolina, we could fill most of our positions with Ph.D.'s. In actuality, only the research jobs really benefit from a Ph.D. background, so we make efforts to not hire Ph.D.'s for positions in which they would be overqualified (and never satisfied). Within IBI, the Ph.D. is useful in data gathering, report writing, scientific know-how for a variety of studies we do, and data analysis and assessment.
