Who is this for and why should you take this course?

So much of what’s important to success in the biotechnology sector is not as it seems – we have watched many people (including ourselves) learn difficult lessons through trial and error. This seems inefficient and possibly unnecessary. We believe that by exposing people with the potential to be this industry’s future leaders to advanced concepts they might otherwise only learn later in their careers, they will better navigate the biotechnology industry and more quickly achieve their potential.

Our goal is to focus on concepts that are not yet taught in other biotechnology courses. For example:

• Drug pricing influences R&D yet is widely misunderstood
• Biotech business models that seem more stable can actually make a company more risky for both employees and investors than business models that may appear less stable
• Entrepreneurs often struggle to reconcile the straightforward economic promises of the business plans they are pitching with the obscure behavioral economics that govern how investors often make decisions.

We can probably all remember a single course, a single lecture, or even a single book that fundamentally changed our thinking and repeatedly guides our decisions. That’s the kind of course we have designed: a short, intense upgrade for people planning on a career in or related to biotechnology, whether in companies, as investors, as lawyers, academic founders, or government.

Application Requirements

We run our course in a "flipped classroom" style, where you are responsible for reading and working through all course materials on your own and then joining the larger group for three live discussion and breakout sessions. If you cannot make the live sessions, we also offer our online materials to those who wish to learn independently on their own time.

Participation in the live discussion sessions requires committing to read Peter Kolchinsky's The Great American Drug Deal and submitting a completed application via Google forms. To submit an application through Google forms, you must log in to a Google account. Users do not necessarily need Gmail addresses; any Google account will do (i.e. institution users of Google Apps for Education should be able to access the form without issues).