Biotechnology Businesses can do more than Biotechnology Business
Thursday, March 4th, 2010
Like all business, biotechnology business can also create new products, jobs, economic development and wealth. Biotechnology businesses can do more.
Biotechnology business is knowledge-based. More than equipment, this business needs knowledge. Scientists work in biotech labs creating new solutions to increase crop yields, resist pests, cure human diseases and meet other needs.
The increase in yields from existing acreage is the only way to meet the hunger of an increasing world population who need not only more food but also more land.
And as the world begins to be populated with more aged people, owing to improved healthcare, it is biotechnology that can potentially provide solutions to many diseases, particularly diseases like Alzheimer’s that have a genetic basis.
Biotechnology businesses can do even more. It can arouse interest in science in young people who prepare for a promising career. As jobs shift to knowledge industries, more and more young people will be attracted to aquisition of needed knowledge.
Biotechnology deals with living organisms, including humans. Research in the field seeks to understand the genetic basis of growth and diseases, and even problems like alcoholism.
The spinoffs from biotechnology businesses are thus surprisingly varied and range far beyond creating wealth for the owners of the business. Read The Academic Entrepreneur Blog post about biotech in Florida for an example.
Tags: biotechnology business, knowledge business, spinoffs from biotechnology business
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Scientific Software and Traditional IT Environment
Thursday, March 4th, 2010
Information technology is supporting everything, from product design through office administration to scientific research. For example, biotechnology researchers can now work with genetic modeling and chemical composition software.
It is in this context that biotechnology firms are seeking to employ more and more IT professionals. The traditional computer scenario is anything but uniform. There are many different protocols, operating sytems, proprietory and open source formats and more. Migrating from one system to another system can often prove beyond the capabilities of a user who is not an IT professional.
Science researchers are scientists, not IT professionals. They are quite likely to become perplexed when software designed for one environment does not work as expected in a different environment. The situation is aggravated because developers of scientific software do not often consider cross-platform limitations of their products.
Open source software that do not need a license to use is beneficial in many ways. However, they can also bring problems because they can be altered by the open source community of developers. And scientists with limited IT expertise can find it a challenge to move data from one open source program to another created in a different environment.
Educational institutions are now beginning to offer programs that equip trainees with the skill to meet the requirements of biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries, such as cross platform data evaluation systems.
Read the blog post about specialized IT programs.
Tags: biotechnology, data migration, information technology, IT protocols, open source software, scientific research, specialized IT training
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