Inventing Breakthroughs and Commercializing Science

Course Number 2107

Professor of Mgt Practice Vicki L. Sato
Fall, 14 2-hour sessions
Paper

This course has evolved over four years to be unique among HBS electives as students are selected from Harvard's schools of business, medicine, science, engineering, law, public health, government, and teaching hospitals. The focus is on inventing breakthroughs, working with other professions such as science, medicine, and law, and moving research from the lab to the market place. A center piece of the course is a multi-disciplinary team project to create the plan for commercializing research from a university or private sector lab. Final presentations of the projects will be attended by Harvard faculty, alums and local venture capitalists. Students will be encouraged to develop the best projects for new venture creation and entry into the HBS business plan contest in April.

Educational Objectives

Inventing Breakthroughs and Commercializing Science has three objectives. First, it gives you the managerial insights to increase the chances that your organization will invent a breakthrough. Second, it gives you an understanding of today's increasingly complex innovative landscape. In the past, firms invented, developed, manufactured, and marketed their products internally. Today, firms are working - and competing - with universities, other firms, and open innovation communities. We will discuss the strategic, operational, and ethical issues that arise on such a landscape. Third, the project will give you hands-on experience - as a member of a multi-disciplinary team - in the development of science-based technologies such as genomics, nanotechnology, information technology, and photonics. While most of the projects originate from Harvard laboratories, students may pursue their own project ideas, as long as the topic fits within the scope of the course.

Course Content and Organization

Module 1 presents an overview of the course and explores how breakthroughs occur. We will learn how to recognize outstanding laboratories that are consistently creative and also rich sources of intellectual property for startups. We will study the classic, first hand account of the discovery of DNA and debate how science and collaboration influence the possibility of inventing a breakthrough.

Module 2 focuses on how to commercialize science. While we discuss a number of cases on university technology transfer and science-based startups, the main learning vehicle in this module is a multi-disciplinary project based on a Harvard research breakthrough. Teams will invent a business model with which to commercialize the breakthrough and present their findings to sponsors and the local science-based entrepreneurial community. A sub-module will assess the intellectual property issues around each project. As part of the final presentation, the class will rank the potential success of all the class projects, using a "wisdom of the crowds" collective assessment tool for analyzing technology opportunities.

Career Focus

The course is aimed at students who will work in or with innovative industries and be complementary to other HBS courses that focus on science-based companies.