MSING016: Strategy for High-Tech Ventures

Lecturer: Chris Coleridge

Aims

This course is intended for anyone interested in working in the life sciences industry as an entrepreneur, manager, consultant, analyst or investor. Moreover, the course will provide an analytical background to the industry for biological and biomedical scientists, engineers and physicians with an interest in understanding industrial aspects of the life sciences or the commercial potential of their work.

The course is structured around the life science industry value chain and highlights critical problems and current issues along the way, from early stage scientific ideas, through licensing, financing and valuation, to discovery, clinical trials, production and sales.

This course exposes students to key strategic challenges faced by investors, managers and scientists at different stages of the value chain in the life science industry.

Through individual course assignments, class-based discussions of business cases and a real life consultancy project, students are familiarized with a range of strategic analysis tools that will help them in a career in the life science industry.

Most cases focus on the biotechnology industry although several cases touch on issues of relevance to the pharmaceutical, biomedical device, and health care sectors as well. 

Texts  

Saloner, G.A. Shepard and J. Podolny (2001), Strategic Management, John Wiley & Sons

Strategy Safari: The Complete Guide Through the Wilds of Strategic Management by Henry Mintzberg, Bruce Ahlstrand, Joseph Lampel, 2nd Edition Financial Times/ Prentice Hall; (2008)

Seeing What's Next: Using the Theories of Innovation to Predict Industry Change: Using Theories of Innovation to Predict Industry Change by Clayton Christensen, Scott Anthony, Erik Roth, Harvard Business School (2004)

Technology Ventures by R.C. Dorf and T.H. Byers, 3rd Edition, McGraw-Hill New York (2010)