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In recent months China’s progress in artificial intelligence has stunned the world. A quieter yet equally significant shift is under way in biotech. China has long been known for churning out generic drugs, supplying raw ingredients and managing clinical trials for the pharmaceutical world. But its drugmakers are now also at the cutting edge, producing innovative medicines that are cheaper than the ones they compete with. China has become the second-largest developer of new drugs, behind only America.

As a consequence, Western drugmakers are increasingly looking east for ideas. Because of expiring drug patents, they stand to lose as much as $140bn a year in sales by 2030. Last year nearly a third of the large licensing deals they struck—those worth $50m or more—were with Chinese firms, triple the share of 2020. LEK, a consultancy, estimates that during that time, the total value of drugs licensed worldwide from China rose 15-fold, to $48bn. In November Merck paid $588m to LaNova Medicines, another Chinese biotech firm, to secure rights to a therapy similar to that produced by Akeso.

China’s government identified biotech as a strategic priority nearly two decades ago. But it was not until 2015 that things really took off, after the drug regulator launched ambitious reforms. It took on more staff and cleared a backlog of 20,000 drug applications in two years. Clinical trials were streamlined and brought into step with global standards. A study by Yimin Cui of Peking University and colleagues found that the time taken to approve the first round of human trials fell to 87 days, from 501 days before the reforms.

The changes coincided with a wave of returning “sea turtles”, the term for Chinese people who studied or worked abroad. China’s vast domestic market helped to attract big drugmakers to its shores, bringing know-how and talent. Easier listing rules gave biotech investors a clearer path to exit. Private funding for Chinese biotech firms rose from $1bn in 2016 to $13.4bn in 2021.

With more brains and money, Chinese firms moved beyond copying Western drugs. Instead of waiting for patents to expire and making generics, they adopted a “fast-follower” strategy—taking known drugs and modifying them to improve safety, efficacy or delivery. Drug development typically starts by identifying a target, usually a protein or gene linked to a disease. Scientists then search for molecules that can either block or boost the target’s function. Since fast-followers are not starting from scratch, they can run speedier, cheaper trials.

2 key takeaways from the article

1. Ever since World War II, the US has been the global leader in science and technology—and benefited immensely from it. Research fuels American innovation and the economy in turn. Scientists around the world want to study in the US and collaborate with American scientists to produce more of that research. These international collaborations play a critical role in American soft power and diplomacy. The products Americans can buy, the drugs they have access to, the diseases they’re at risk of catching—are all directly related to the strength of American research and its connections to the world’s scientists.
2. That scientific leadership is now being dismantled, according to more than 10 federal workers who spoke to MIT Technology Review, as the Trump administration—spearheaded by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—slashes personnel, programs, and agencies. Meanwhile, the president himself has gone after relationships with US allies. 

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Topics:  USA, Science, Technology, Competitive Advantage

Ever since World War II, the US has been the global leader in science and technology—and benefited immensely from it. Research fuels American innovation and the economy in turn. Scientists around the world want to study in the US and collaborate with American scientists to produce more of that research. These international collaborations play a critical role in American soft power and diplomacy. The products Americans can buy, the drugs they have access to, the diseases they’re at risk of catching—are all directly related to the strength of American research and its connections to the world’s scientists.

That scientific leadership is now being dismantled, according to more than 10 federal workers who spoke to MIT Technology Review, as the Trump administration—spearheaded by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—slashes personnel, programs, and agencies. Meanwhile, the president himself has gone after relationships with US allies. 

They warn that dismantling the behind-the-scenes scientific research programs that backstop American life could lead to long-lasting, perhaps irreparable damage to everything from the quality of health care to the public’s access to next-generation consumer technologies. The US took nearly a century to craft its rich scientific ecosystem; if the unraveling that has taken place over the past month continues, Americans will feel the effects for decades to come.

In her 2013 book The Entrepreneurial State, Mariana Mazzucato, a leading economist studying innovation at University College London, found that every major technological transformation in the US, from electric cars to Google to the iPhone, can trace its roots back to basic science research once funded by the federal government. If the past offers any lesson, that means every major transformation in the future could be shortchanged with the destruction of that support.

The government doesn’t just give money, either. It supports American science in numerous other ways, and the US reaps the returns. The Department of State helps attract the best students from around the world to American universities. Amid stagnating growth in the number of homegrown STEM PhD graduates, recruiting foreign students remains one of the strongest pathways for the US to expand its pool of technical talent, especially in strategic areas like batteries and semiconductors. Many of those students stay for years, if not the rest of their lives; even if they leave the country, they’ve already spent some of their most productive years in the US and will retain a wealth of professional connections with whom they’ll collaborate, thereby continuing to contribute to US science.

Innovation and growth are inherently linked. Companies that build new businesses and develop new offerings, processes, or business models are better able to capture growth opportunities and hedge against disruption in a highly uncertain business environment.  This conclusion was forcefully reinforced in McKinsey’s recent survey of 1,039 companies around the world. The largest share of respondents identified the ability to innovate as the most important strategic factor for generating growth over the coming 12 months.

What distinguishes top economic performers from the broader group, however, is their comprehensive approach to innovation and growth—both within and outside their current industries or geographies. In the survey, top performers cited innovating new offerings as their number-one investment priority for accelerating growth over the next 12 months. They were also more than 63 percent more likely to innovate at scale by building or acquiring new businesses outside their current industries and 50 percent more likely to expand geographically compared with their lower-performing peers.

On average, 80 percent of corporate growth comes from within a company’s core industry, and innovation is critical to that growth. While overall industry momentum and commercial levers such as pricing and marketing are critical, the next two largest factors, noted by 38 and 34 percent of the survey respondents, respectively, are innovation of new offerings within the core business and expanding into new regions.

Each of the top companies followed a clear path of strategic advantage in choosing their innovation investments, to both maximize the upside potential and limit risk. They based their strategies on evergreen principles of innovation.

1. Commit to an innovation aspiration. Companies that pursue growth even during downturns consistently outperform their peers, our research shows. Their leaders foster an aspirational mindset by building an innovation culture and ensuring employee ownership of growth initiatives.
2. Discover new ways to extend your strengths. Top performers master ways to take their unique strengths and deploy them profitably outside their immediate ecosystems. Where are your manufacturing capabilities, intellectual property, customer relationships, and other strengths truly distinctive? AI tools can facilitate these searches,7 revealing more granular growth pockets faster than traditional methods. Following your competitive advantage essentially extends your core business to adjacent or even breakout opportunities, but with less risk.
3. Accelerate into tailwinds. If you operate in an industry with high growth momentum—thanks to rapid innovation, as in semiconductor or biotechnology sectors, or significant headroom for growth, as is the case with emerging technologies—focusing on gaining more market share in that sector by innovating new offerings or acquiring new capabilities is a less risky (and likely more profitable) growth path than moving into an unfamiliar sector. Companies in mature or highly competitive markets, on the other hand, can bolster their growth by exploring high-growth markets elsewhere.
4. Evolve and disrupt your own business, even the entire ecosystem. Many of today’s top companies didn’t just ride industry tailwinds—they created them. For example, defense technology unicorn Anduril Industries is challenging the industry’s conventional “cost plus” acquisition model in the public sector by fostering an open ecosystem of partners to build customized, interoperable solutions.
5. Scale faster by hardwiring M&A into your innovation capabilities. Many leading organizations acquire capabilities, such as technologies or intellectual property, to accelerate their growth. They define growth opportunities they want to capture, develop lists of capabilities required to win in those spaces, and then assess which capabilities they already have, which they should build organically through innovation, and which they need to buy. Such capability maps help business leaders chart paths into areas of strategic importance and reduce the risk of falling behind competitors.

Remaining on the frontier of expertise in important areas is critical to any company’s success.   AI is changing the cost and availability of expertise, and that will fundamentally alter how businesses organize and compete.   Technological progress creates two fundamental forces that complicate that challenge.  First, the overall body of expertise in the world is constantly expanding, making it harder to stay at the leading edge in every relevant area.  Second, the cost of accessing expertise is constantly falling.

Since the 1980s several technological innovations have led companies to rely more and more on markets to access expertise far broader and deeper than what could practically exist within a single entity. Those that use third-party business and technology platform services have been able to narrow the scope of their in-house expertise, allowing internal resources to focus on the areas that drive their competitive differentiation.

We are at an early stage in the AI era, and the technology is evolving extremely quickly. Providers are rapidly introducing AI “copilots,” “bots,” and “assistants” into applications to augment employees’ workflows. These tools have been trained on a wide range of data sources and possess expertise in many domains.  Although the quality of expertise embedded in these tools is already relatively high, the amount of it continues to grow swiftly while the cost of accessing it decreases.  Companies that take advantage of AI will benefit from what we call the triple product.  These are:

1. Cost and time savings.  Historically companies have looked to offshoring and outsourcing to reduce costs. However, they found it cost-effective only if they outsourced an entire process. Now, with AI assistants, people can access expertise for individual tasks or steps within it, which allows them to make improvements without having to move the entire process. The ease and low cost of handoffs to AI mean that many processes can now be run far more efficiently. In the future workers at all levels in a company may take on more-supervisory roles, approving actions and managing exceptions as AI agents increasingly handle end-to-end execution.
2. Greater workforce productivity. We argue that today expertise follows a normal distribution pattern within any given population of employees: Some of them are simply more knowledgeable or skillful than others owing to experience or inherent capabilities. As companies adopt AI assistants, those assistants will effectively put at least a base amount of expertise into the hands of every employee who uses them, enabling that person to perform better. We already see a pattern in early deployments of AI assistants: They bring low performers up to levels previously considered average and boost the capabilities of high performers (albeit to a lesser extent).
3. More investment in activities that matter. As AI agents and bots transform business processes and empower workforces, companies will be able to fundamentally rethink how they deploy their resources. Smart ones will identify the handful of processes in which they can provide world-class expertise and capabilities and reallocate resources to deepen the moats around those processes. At the same time, they will reduce employees’ focus on noncore processes by leveraging AI-enabled platforms provided by third parties.

Clearly the companies that are best at continually increasing their triple-product return will have the greatest chance of competitive success. But getting there is hard. It involves meeting digital transformation requirements, aligning teams around a new course of action, helping people across the company change their behavior to maximize the benefits of working with AI, and reallocating budgets.

If companies derive value from providing a differentiated bundle of expertise, how can they continue to be relevant when improvements in AI’s core capabilities make some or all of that expertise more easily available to competitors and customers? What is the basis for value capture in an era of abundant expertise?  We believe that every company will need to reevaluate its strategy in this changing era and will have to ask itself three questions.  Which aspects of the problem we now solve for customers will customers use AI to solve themselves?  Which types of expertise that we currently possess will need to evolve most if we are to remain ahead of AI’s capabilities?  And which assets can we build or augment to enhance our ability to stay competitive as AI advances?

Have you ever had the nagging doubt that you might be boring your audience? You know the feeling—the one where you look out into the sea of faces and you can’t quite tell if they are engaged or just politely nodding along. The sense of uncertainty can be overwhelming, especially if you’re trying to communicate something important.  You’re not alone. This is a common challenge, and it’s one that can be tackled with a few simple strategies.

To help you connect more deeply with your audience, it’s crucial to speak from the heart and implement strategies that enhance empathy and presence when speaking in public. When you engage authentically and emotionally, your message becomes more powerful and your audience feels valued and understood.  Let’s take a look at three key strategies to help you achieve just that.

1. Smile: The Bridge To Connection.  The first strategy is deceptively simple but incredibly powerful: Smile.  Professionals who come into a training session, ready to deliver their material, but they forget one crucial element: the human element. The power of a smile should not be underestimated. When you’re speaking in front of a group, whether it’s a boardroom presentation or a large seminar, a smile is the first step in breaking the ice.  A smile conveys warmth, openness and approachability. It tells your audience that you are here not just to talk at them, but to engage with them.  While this may seem trivial, a smile has the power to lower barriers between you and your audience, making you appear more relatable and engaging.
2. Adopt A Conversational Tone: Be Natural And Approachable.  One of the most common mistakes speakers make, especially in corporate settings, is using a tone that’s overly formal or stiff. While it’s important to maintain professionalism, speaking as though you’re reading from a script can quickly alienate your audience. The trick is to adopt a conversational tone.
3. Tell Personal Stories: Bring Authenticity To Your Message.  Perhaps the most powerful way to connect with an audience is through storytelling. Sharing personal anecdotes not only humanizes you as a speaker but also makes you more relatable and memorable.

Managers who recognize the importance of innovation to their organization are likely to urge employees to bring them fresh, creative ideas. Yet, many employees grouse that their best ideas are frequently overlooked, dismissed, or misunderstood by those very same managers. 

Ironically, managers themselves may be a serious impediment to innovation. Deeply rooted in their own domains of expertise, managers often struggle to recognize the value of novel ideas, particularly when such ideas lack precedents within their field.

`Herein lies the paradox: The very novelty that makes an idea valuable to an organization and likely to generate extraordinary rewards is the same quality that makes it difficult for managers to appreciate an idea. Organizations thrive on the ability to disrupt norms and embrace the unfamiliar, yet managers’ mental models often favor the predictable and familiar. How can this critical dilemma be resolved?

The authors’ research points to a powerful yet straightforward solution: Managers need to build diverse personal networks within their organizations and beyond. The link between having a diverse social network and being innovative is no secret — it’s a cornerstone of creativity research. But their findings add a twist: Diverse connections not only help employees generate more creative ideas; they are critical in allowing managers to evaluate and recognize the worth of employees’ ideas.

Frequently interacting with a broader set of people fosters openness to new perspectives and a greater appreciation of unconventional ideas.  According to the authors’ findings, by diversifying their social networks, managers can overcome their aversion to uncertainty. In gaining exposure to diverse perspectives and unfamiliar domains, and acquiring a broader understanding of their organization’s strengths, managers become more capable of identifying and valuing the potential of novel ideas.

How can these insights translate into actionable strategies that improve managers’ acceptance of novel ideas?   Expand and diversify advice networks.  Encourage employee networking.  Recognize and address bias against novelty.  Support idea endorsement through social proof.

Nick Matzorkis is an entrepreneur’s entrepreneur, having founded successful companies as diverse as US Search, Global Agora China, SUP ATX (which popularized the sport of stand-up paddleboarding), and more.  While Matzorkis will be the first to admit that success for any startup requires some level of funding and know-how, he has found that these seven business tips in particular can give any startup an edge:

1. Have a strong vision.  A clear and powerful vision is the foundation of any successful enterprise. It’s the North Star that directs action and keeps everyone on the same page. This is not a dream, it’s an articulated mission that everyone understands and trusts. Use your intuition to form this vision. Even if you receive external validation, you and your leadership team are the engine that runs the show.  Trust your gut and protect your vision relentlessly—no one else holds the keys to your success like you and everyone who shares your fire.
2. Find the right partners.  Partners should be chosen carefully. Search for people who are loyal, honest, and honorable. These qualities are non-negotiable. Complementary skillsets, while essential to a balanced team, aren’t as important as character. Without trust and respect, your best team is doomed. Look for people who share your values, so that you can trust them fully.
3. Be ambitious.  Real growth happens when tentative ideas and goals are transformed into actual achievements.  Ambition is the key to exponential growth—you and your partners must be driven and relentless in the pursuit of your goals. This symbiotic drive generates an upward spiral, as you push each other to go higher and achieve more. Uneven ambitions are a source of anger and tension. Make sure from the beginning everyone agrees about growth expectations and the effort required.
4. Make a commitment.  A business partnership is like a marriage, it’s a commitment that can last for a lifetime and you have to deal with wins and losses along the way. Be prepared for disappointments, disagreements, and periods of extreme pressure. These are the moments when the resilience of your relationship will be put to the test. Open communication, respect, and an equal willingness to face challenges are critical to making it through the storms.
5. Don’t give up control of your business.  At some point in your entrepreneurial journey, you will likely need external funding, but be wary of giving up control of your company. Do not abandon ownership of your equity and control unless you absolutely need the capital. If you do have to give up some control, ensure your contract allows you to regain it in the future. This preserves your long-term value and keeps you invested in the business you’ve created.
6. Don’t let accountants and attorneys dictate how to run your company.  Guidance from accountants and lawyers is helpful, but keep in mind they’re advisers, not decision-makers. Their experience is invaluable when dealing with legal and financial issues, but it should not determine your business plans.
7. Love what you do and have fun, even during the tough times.  Being in business is challenging but not impossible. Create a positive and productive workplace where everyone feels valued and inspired. Even in stressful times, keep a smile on your face and enjoy small victories. A healthy environment not only enhances morale but also results in increased productivity and innovation. When you’re passionate about your work, the problems are easier to overcome and the victories are more satisfying.

Today, we find ourselves in an era where multiple generations, each with their unique preferences and behaviors, coexist in the marketplace. For some brands, this presents a significant challenge for marketers who must navigate an increasingly fragmented landscape to reach their target audience.

There are seven primary generations that exist in the marketplace today — The Silent Generation, Baby Boomers, Generation X, Millennials, Generation Z and Generation Alpha. Considering these generations span roughly a century, it should come as no surprise that the marketing practices to reach each generation will vary. The good news is that there are some consistent practices that can be leveraged to reach the majority of these audiences simultaneously without significant effort. It’s critical for entrepreneurs and small business marketers to understand how to build a unified marketing strategy.

Each generation is completely different when it comes to finding products, interacting with brands and making purchases. The major driver is the influence that technology has had on each of these groups.

To effectively reach a multi-generational audience, entrepreneurs need to carefully craft a marketing strategy that incorporates a number of various techniques. There are three key elements that every multi-generational marketing strategy should include to be successful.

1. Data-driven insights.  Marketing to a wide range of demographics can create challenges when it comes to measuring the performance of your campaigns. By leveraging data analytic tools, marketers gain valuable insights into consumer behavior and identify which generations are responding to their marketing messages. This information can help business owners track the effectiveness of campaigns and modify their strategy over time if one or more groups aren’t responding well to the campaign.
2. Personalized marketing.  Marketing tools today have a wide range of personalization options that allow companies to craft unique marketing messages for individuals based on their behaviors and online activity, preferences and recent interaction with the brand. According to one McKinsey study, three-quarters of all consumers admit they are more likely to purchase from a brand after receiving personalized marketing. Many of these tools are powered by AI, which allows the business to create campaigns customized for each generation without the need for a massive marketing or content creation team.
3. Multi-channel marketing.  Each generation seems to congregate in consistent corners of the internet. For example, Baby Boomers are more likely to spend their time on Facebook while Gen Z prefers platforms like TikTok. Creating compelling content is a good first step to any digital marketing strategy. However, to reach multiple generational audiences, you may need to make your content multi-channel-friendly.  The good news is that most content can be recycled across multiple platforms with little effort.