Biotechnology has lived in the imaginations of science fiction writers for decades. It is a broad term for a variety of technologies that employ living organisms to create products. In the real 21st century, it’s a global industry expected to reach a value of more than $465 billion in 2024. Companies use biotechnology to engineer life-saving drugs, biofuels, and environmentally friendly chemicals. Biotech could theoretically solve many of the world’s problems, including food scarcity, climate change, aging, energy crises, and currently incurable diseases.
However, the path from an innovative idea produced in a lab to profitable business is not easy. On top of that, many of the scientists developing new biotechnology are not as versed in business strategy as they are in innovation. That’s not their area of expertise, and rightly so.
An Innovative Collaboration
It is the area of expertise of the MBA students at Goizueta Business School, and a new collaboration between Emory University, The Roberto C. Goizueta Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation, and an organization called Nucleate, which is helping scientists create companies from their research and raise capital. By partnering the skillsets of PhD candidates with Emory MBA students, this innovative collaboration gives life to new biotechnology businesses.
Michael Gernatt 24MBA, CEI Fellow and Finance & Strategy Lead of the Atlanta Chapter of Nucleate, says, “Our job is to help them translate their knowledge into real world applications. We give them the resources, capabilities, and education to actually determine if it’s a viable option. So, they can take what they’re working on from the research and lab side and turn that into a potential business that has some commercial application.”
Bringing Business Skills to the Table
Gernatt is one of several MBA candidates working with Nucleate in their activator program. According to Nucleate, the activator program begins by matching the right PhD students with the right MBA students to form teams. They then develop business plans across months of workshops with industry experts. Upon completion, the teams pitch the business to biotechnology executives, advisors, and investors. To date, Nucleate has created 78 companies and raised $310M in capital world-wide.
There are a lot of resources and capabilities that organizations like Goizueta can provide. We can help people that are much more academic and don’t have any business experience.
Michael Gernatt 24MBA
“They’re very smart people,” says Gernatt. “However, they’ve never actually been inside of a board presentation or developed a company strategy. We’re helping them to understand things like, ‘is this market even viable for what we’re trying to do? Is there funding available? What’s the actual value that we are providing?’ And so I think that’s an area where we can help from the business school side of things.”
Diverse Business Backgrounds
Molly McDonald 25MBA, another CEI Fellow, says the students provide context and strategy to support the ideas grown in labs. Before beginning her MBA program, McDonald had a career in consulting. She spent years working in healthcare strategy and financing solutions. “Healthcare, which obviously relates to biomed and biotech, has always been intriguing to me,” she says. “Health directly impacts people’s everyday lives. So, finding innovative ways to improve people’s health is important.”
I think Nucleate is a prime example of how we can partner with people who are experts in the science, and bring our business skillset to the table. We have an opportunity to bring innovation and change-making solutions to the broader population that can have a real impact.
Molly McDonald 25MBA
Gernatt has a bachelor’s degree in molecular biology. His original career plan did not include things like accounting, spreadsheets, or financial strategy. Since beginning his career and continuing his studies at Goizueta, “I’ve developed a better understanding of the ability to process information and communicate. It’s really valuable. And often times, yes, it is done with spreadsheets. But that’s actually how things get done. You need people doing the academic work and clinical work in a healthcare setting. That’s really important. But you also need people who are thinking very strategically about things like, ‘what markets are we pursuing? How are we attracting the right employees? How are we aligning incentives?’”
In this collaboration, which also includes graduate students at Georgia Tech University, Gernatt and McDonald have found a way to put their interest in the health sciences to work alongside their business acumen. Gernatt says, “I’ve realized I’m a little better at thinking through the business side, but I still want to work in the healthcare and life sciences area, because I think the problems that are worth solving are the hardest ones [to solve].”
Making Atlanta a Center of Biotechnology
Most of the world’s biotechnology companies, think tanks, and start-ups have been concentrated in small areas on two coasts of the United States: Northern California on the west coast, and the Northeastern part of the country in areas like Boston, New York, and New Jersey. That’s something Goizueta and Nucleate are looking to change, says McDonald. “When we look at Atlanta and Emory specifically, there’s so much happening in the healthcare and biomed space. And so we’re trying to bridge our strengths of having business school students working with the PhD students in these areas to try to collaborate more, and build off of each other’s strengths.”
A New Way of Developing Biotech Business
Two challenges to commercializing innovation in the biotechnology field are the length of time and scale of funding required to bring an idea from lab to market. Gernatt says, “The cost of developing a drug has increased towards roughly a billion dollars. And it takes about 10 years to actually bring a drug from the lab to an FDA approved drug. Some people may see that and think it’s not worth going after, because it’s just so hard.”
For people that are a little bit more entrepreneurial minded, they think that’s a really great opportunity, because something’s clearly broken there.
Michael Gernatt 24MBA
“If it takes a billion dollars and 10 years… there has to be a better way. And so I think those are the interesting problems that are worth trying to solve,” says Gernatt.
McDonald agrees. “When I think about biotech and biomed, it’s so complex. And I think about the challenge of figuring out what does that actually mean? And what are these people actually trying to do?”
I think that’s where as a business school student can come in and help to really lay out the science. Great, you have this super innovative idea. But now how do we translate that to make it comprehendible and understandable by the general population? That’s something we can help with from a business school perspective.
Molly McDonald 25MBA
Gernatt says, “I certainly do not have all the answers. I also doubt I’m going to be the person to come up with a breakthrough drug. But there’s one thing I think I do have, and am trying to continue to build. I have some of the skill sets and insights to help people that have that really nuanced academic perspective. I can build something from that. So that’s what I want to try to continue to do.”
Learn More
Emory University and The Roberto C. Goizueta Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation look forward to a continued partnership with Nucleate to empower the next generation of biotech leaders. To learn more about the Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation, sign up for our email newsletter or follow us on our social media channels: LinkedIn | Instagram
