Growth versus growth

I was in a meeting where the CEO was giving a talk about my particular division's growth relative to the rest of the company. When the CEO comes in, it's a big deal. He wears his $50,000 suit and leads one of the largest medical device companies in the world, and he's a ruthless businessman. He showed a plot like the one I have here (the left one), and a junior engineer from a different internal group than mine asked, "How many saved lives is that?".  He had no clue. Luckily, the president of my division knew that approximate figure. The CEO looked peeved that he was asked that.

I'd say ~90% of the people in my field I've talked to, and 100% of those in my group, got into this business to help people. The CEO was definitely in the 10%.  I have given presentations talking about growth and potential markets and I never once have put a dollar figure in because I only care about the people.  That's the only thing I talk about when interviewing people because it's the most important thing.  The only dollar figure I care about at all is the cost of my devices. If the device isn't cheap enough, even given 99% efficacy, no one will be able to afford it to cure their ailments. 

I understand that someone has to talk numbers, because without my $millions/year operating budget I wouldn't be saving ANY lives (well....maybe a few). But we should be happy that we're beating out our competition for lives saved, not that we made more money, but because we know our products are superior and our growth means even more patients saved by our products.  I understand money will also be a part of my academic future (I'm only kind of naive), but there's still the greater good...right?

Funding academics

Normally, when there's a technology I discover through publications or a competing or start-up company, I have to make a critical decision for my company:

a) Make a better version of the technology,
b) License the technology, or
c) Collaborate.

There's a d): keep it to myself, but let's assume that doesn't exist.  Each of these has pros and cons (obviously), and a couple weeks ago I discovered a technology that will be very cool in one of my products.  And I know that with my involvement, it will be much better (one of the best things about the internet is that I can be cocky and not feel bad for it :) ).  Not just because of my knowledge, but because of my budget.  In this particular case, it's a lab at a major state university in a different state (not one of the schools I applied for...for those of you thinking about conflicts of interest).  So I'm weighing which of these options I should pursue, and since I have some experience in a), b), and c), of course I want to blog my thoughts.

a) I've done this before with a start-up that had a technology that they weren't willing to share at all.  I came up with a prototype alternative using a different physical principle, but giving similar, but better, data.  This method was cheaper and had other clinical advantages.  The company didn't get purchased for the hundreds of millions of dollars they wanted from us (don't cry for them, they got bought by one of our competitors).  My version is getting ready to save a ton of lives as we've gotten approval for sale in the good ol' USA.  This was relatively cheap, and turned around in less than half the time of the company acquisition and integrating their technology.

b) I didn't have time to create a specific product, so I knew of a company that had something close-to-done.  The product isn't really something complicated, just something that's necessary for the particular surgical procedure.  So I led the licensing effort, and ended up with a product that got recalled after 3 months.  Not a pleasant experience, and now I'm redesigning the product myself.

c) I collaborate with two university medical centers to perform animal and some human studies.  But they have relatively little engineering input, they just perform the procedures and process data for us. Nothing spectacular, although I've gotten these universities over a half million bucks each per year.  The one time I found a university to work with me on an actual product things never worked out because of legal.  They wanted a crazy amount of overhead (500%), and our people were not okay with that.  Then our legal department got mad, then my manager got mad. Not a great experience.

So, I talked to legal a few months ago, and got approval from the VP of my company.  I've been allotted $800,000 over two years to allocate to this.  The PI has a couple smaller grants, but nothing big.  He was very receptive, and he has gotten his legal department on board.  We have agreed to 400% and my company gets to keep the IP.  This significantly cuts into the budget.  We'll be able to fund maybe two students, but we will have enough left to do what we need.

I'm really looking forward to this because I'll be able to work with students again!  Being treated like a colleague from the PI is fun, too.  He doesn't really act like I'm his boss, which I appreciate.  I just want to do cool science.  My #2 working with me is pretty pumped about this too, because it's her alma mater for her MS and BS (she has a PhD).  I'm going to try and make sure she's very well trained.  If I get admission to the ivory tower, she'll need to take over.  And if the academic search doesn't end well, then at least I'll have this academic exposure!  Bright sides!

The price of freedom

For some reason some of my old posts got relegated. I'm reposting the ones I find in the next few days. Sorry if you already read these...

I was conversing with my spouse about the places to which I applied. One thing that came up was cost-of-living. Right now I make significantly more than my spouse (6x). My salary will most likely be halved if I manage the make the switch. I hope it will still be worth it. A lot of academics I talk to tell me I've made the correct call in going to industry (they don't know that I took this job to get experience to bring to academia). They say the money is worth not working on exactly what you want to, also they say having a boss (and the other crappy things that come with industry) is a minor inconvenience given the higher cashflow. But here's the thing: they don't know since most of them have been in academia their whole lives. Just like I can't speak to academia other than from a grad student's perspective. They think that grant writing and teaching will stop in industry. It doesn't. I write to a different audience begging for money and I play politics all the time. Except I get screamed at when something goes wrong

This brings me to my point: what's the price of (research) freedom?  For me, it will be a cut in my salary by 50%. Moving from a high-level position for a major medical device company is a big move. So I made a pros and cons list. I won't share it unless you want it, but industry won just in pure amount of things on the list. But, when I weighed things (1-10) scale on importance, academia won big-time. The people in academia telling me that I should stay see the $$$, but I'm certain they would get tired of the grind very quickly. But when some douche is monitoring their hours, and telling them not to pursue something interesting because there really isn't a market for it, they'll realize how lucky they are. 

I suspect this is a "grass is greener..." situation since academics have their own crappy stuff to deal with, but the things I hold most dear (not money and patents) are not in industry, so maybe I'm correct.  And should invest in a lawn mower.