Product details

20 November, 2001 was the day when the Australian proteomics start-up company, Proteome Systems Ltd (PSL), shocked the world biotech community with its announcement of a global strategic alliance with IBM Life Sciences. It takes 10 or 15 years to get a drug out of the laboratories for evaluation in animal and human trials and ultimately to market. Moreover, understanding the gene function alone does not provide answers to the critical questions of how the human body gets sick, how it recovers from illness, and how it grows and changes. Proteomics promises to shorten the lead-time to a few years by facilitating the process by which researchers identify safer and more effective medicines earlier in the drug development process. This case is concerned to bring out the way that an entrepreneurial endeavour like PSL has to put together a ''package'' of resources, routines and interfirm relations in order to get started as a business entity.