The Rise of Networked #Biotech

Connection changes the nature of an object.

Biology continues to evolve and so does the nature of the biotech industry, from the rise of biotech VC bloggers like Bruce Booth from Atlas Ventures five years ago, providing deep wisdom freely, to the emergence of networked biotech founders over the last few years who provide advice and role models as they grow their businesses, for other PhD’s and Postdocs to follow.

A new thematic is emerging in biotech, the connected who give freely to their networks, win.

The Power of the Network

Money

Biology is being transformed by social networks, crowdfunding platforms like Indiegogo, Kickstarter and Experiment are allowing scientists to raise money for science from the crowd to fund previously improbable projects, from sequencing extinct animals, open sourcing insulin, raising money for the first commercial glowing plant to many more innovations.

The crowd and social networks are accelerating the pace of innovation in science.

Connections

Young scientists, PhD’s and Postdocs are now being empowered by social media networks and tools, twitter, facebook, linkedin, wechat, whatsapp and slack are accelerating connections and ad-hoc networks.

Social networks crave further connections and more interaction.

Entrepreneurial scientists are tweeting and connecting, PhD scientists, early in their career are now able to change entire life trajectories through social networks.

Ethan Perlstein PhD, CEO of Perlstein Labs was able to harness social networks to raise his first $500k investment after his postdoc, for a company which was just an idea and is now a real therapeutic biotech company with 8 employees, which all started with one tweet

Scientific Founders like Jason Kelly, CEO of Ginko Bioworks, is a shining example how even successful CEO’s in this new generation of biotech founders, stay engaged and open to social networks, Jason tweets and he’s also recently raised $100m to continue to grow his biotech at a blistering pace!

Science

It isn’t just scientific entrepreneurs embracing the network, some of those blazing a new trail for connected science are Professors like Drew Endy at Stanford, George Church at Harvard and Atul Butte at UCSF, they tweet, share and write regularly with a deep understanding of the importance of embracing networked communications, sharing science not just in journals but on the mediums that most of us actively use, twitter, facebook and linkedin.

The rise of networked biotechnology has also led to the emergence of open access scientific journals like PloS and for the journals still reticent to provide open access, the network and a smart scientist has also provided a solution through sci-hub, making papers freely available (even if they’re copywrited).

Biotech in a Network First Environment

So what does this mean for the future of biotech? How will scientific entrepreneurs and scientist have to adapt as the power of the network grows?

It means we have to think more in terms of networks than individual interactions, moving away from zero sum games to providing real value to the networks we’re part of freely and openly.