Who Is Acting Like Steve Jobs Now ?

The news of Steve Jobs resigning is so ubiquitous, there is no point in my linking to it here. What is noteworthy is that Mister Jobs mind and drive percolated at a time when America was in a state of severe economic malaise. 

About the USA's 1973 to 1975 Recession

I am looking at the local paper's Business section from yesterday (24 August 2011). The macro indicators are dour: Japan's credit rating cut, California's unemployment rate is 12% (second only to Nevada), and new-home sales are less than half the 700,000 that economists assert represents a healthy market.

This moment, at a low-rent industrial park amidst the whirring and clanking of light machining, another great mind is focused on the same task accomplished by Jobs: invention. She is unaware we are watching, typing behind her back. She senses only the vision materializing and would not read this paper if you handed it to her on a silver plater; too distracting; task at hand; damn it, get out of my shop.

I return to the aforementioned Business section. There are several obvious hints about the new treasure: baby boomers a 70,000,000 member marketing space, another big bank is cutting jobs due to shrinkage in the financial sector, and it is boom times for the data analysis industry. Subtler hints are also begging for attention in the contra treatment of the headlines I mentioned: the home is no longer a sure investment, mass layoffs mean skills and trades in transition, while big governments are weighed down in debt.

Hey lady, what is that thing you're working on?

San Diego County BioTechs Moving to Contracting Business Model

Sourcing and contracting among local biotech companies.


Contract Research Companies

Explora and more than 100 similar businesses, called contract research organizations, have sprung up in San Diego County in recent years to do the heavy lifting of drug development — running labs, formulating and manufacturing experimental treatments, and managing clinical trials for biotechnology companies.

As investment funding has slowed to a trickle in a tough economy, many biotechs slashed their internal research and development operations and became “virtual,” operating with only a handful of their own employees.

Full SignOn San Diego Article


Economics Shifts Industry Business Model

Unable to raise capital, many biotechs and medical instrument makers were forced over the past 16 months to slash their budgets, lay off employees, and look for easier and less expensive ways to carry on the process of bringing drugs and devices to market. In some cases, that has meant outsourcing research, clinical trials, and other work to overseas labs. But many San Diego life sciences companies also are turning to local consulting firms, biomedical research laboratories, and a variety of specialized service providers. Collectively, they are known as CROs, or clinical research organizations—and in San Diego, at least, they are proliferating. (CROs are alternately known as contract research organizations).

Full Xconomy Article