Business Planning
A start-up lab has entrepreneurial requirements that must be met in order for it to successfully develop into a full-fledged business
Professors Sharon Belenzon and Ashish Arora studied investment decline in scientific research.
Advances enhance performance of mass spectrometers.
Pharmaceutical companies, healthcare providers, research organizations, universities, and government agencies are continuously under pressure to cut costs due to a generalized economic downturn. This pressure has moved the procurement process to the forefront, with managers looking to achieve better business performance through more effective management of categories, suppliers, and teams.1
The total volume of research at the University of Michigan was $1.31 billion in the fiscal year that closed June 30, 2014, just below the record high of $1.33 billion from the previous year.
Biofuel producers in Western Canada will soon be able to purify and convert raw glycerol more cost-effectively thanks to an investment of $538,542, announced recently by the Honourable Michelle Rempel, Minister of State for Western Economic Diversification.
Problem: A variety of factors can result in obsolete laboratory equipment and R&D devices. Project
completion, equipment upgrade, lab closure, and downsizing all create surplus pharmaceutical assets
no longer required in the same capacity—or at all. Given budget restrictions and the importance placed
on environmentally-sound business practices, organizations can’t afford to allow surplus assets to lie
idle or dispose of them without thought to the process. Surplus requires an innovative and sustainable
process that supports strategic business goals.
$2.2B spent on medical, science, engineering research in FY2013.
When looking at best practices for running a lab, things as seemingly diverse as staff development and retention, inventory management, procurement, and efficient use of training spends, need to be looked at together. After all, equipment is only as good as the staff who uses it and your staff is only as good as their training.
The flow of federal research funding to Brown University is only now starting to recover from the 2013 federal sequestration. As a result of the sequester, the total pool of research funds at the University decreased by 13.7 percent between 2013 and 2014, said Vice President for Research David Savitz, but funding for new research proposals in the first half of fiscal year 2015 is up significantly — about 30 percent — from 2014.
