tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5251734313338196429.post1150329923239100325..comments2024-02-27T04:00:13.116-08:00Comments on Cell Therapy Blog: A Therapeutic Long Tail. Does Cell Therapy Fit the Model? (Part II)Lee Bucklerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05830444908952419444noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5251734313338196429.post-14774070916358712402009-06-29T10:50:14.671-07:002009-06-29T10:50:14.671-07:00Malcolm Gladwell recently had a great article in t...Malcolm Gladwell recently had a great article in the New Yorker calling out the errors (or perhaps, limitations) in Chris Anderson's argument that the new business model for everything should be "free".<br /><br />It's a great article quite aside from its relevance to this post but there is one section where he critiques Anderson's premise that “The more products are made of ideas, rather than stuff, the faster they can get cheap.” Anderson, of course, extends the applicability of this premise beyond digital products even to the pharmaceutical industry saying "Genetic engineering means that drug development is poised to follow the same learning curve of the digital world, to “accelerate in performance while it drops in price.”"<br /><br />Gladwell argues that the pharmaceutical industry's Long Tail move to meeting unmet needs in niche markets actually has the opposite effect on price. <br /><br />"In the pharmaceutical world, what’s more, companies have chosen to use the potential of new technology to do something very different from their counterparts in Silicon Valley. They’ve been trying to find a way to serve smaller and smaller markets—to create medicines tailored to very specific subpopulations and strains of diseases—and smaller markets often mean higher prices. The biotechnology company Genzyme spent five hundred million dollars developing the drug Myozyme, which is intended for a condition, Pompe disease, that afflicts fewer than ten thousand people worldwide. That’s the quintessential modern drug: a high-tech, targeted remedy that took a very long and costly path to market. Myozyme is priced at three hundred thousand dollars a year. Genzyme isn’t a mining company: its real assets are intellectual property—information, not stuff. But, in this case, information does not want to be free. It wants to be really, really expensive."<br /><br />Interesting.<br /><br />http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2009/07/06/090706crbo_books_gladwell?currentPage=1Lee Bucklerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05830444908952419444noreply@blogger.com