Risk-taking in pharma vs. venture capital

By Lily | Published: July 2, 2009

I’ve been thinking lately about risk-taking in scientific research, focusing on academia. Yesterday Seth Godin wrote about the nonlinear relationship between risk and reward: small increases in risk can yield large rewards, but only large risks yield the largest rewards.

This got me wondering about where pharma is on the risk-taking spectrum, and whether pharma should be trying more out-there ideas. In some ways, a big pharma company managing its research programs has parallels to a venture capital firm managing its investments. I’d be interested to learn how risk management strategies compare between pharma and VC, and if there is anything one could learn from the other.

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  3. Taking risks in research: the NIH grant process
  4. Recent software ads target pharma

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