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• Case | HBS Case Collection | June 2020

  Breakthroughs at Blueprint Medicines

  Richard G. Hamermesh, Kathy Giusti and Susie L. Ma

  Precision medicine company Blueprint Medicines was building a successful track record for bringing drug therapies to market 40% faster than average. The company had spent $40 million dollars and two years building a compound library that became its drug development engine. Blueprint’s drug development strategy was twofold—it focused on creating a single drug compound for multiple disease indications, while at the same time developing drugs to track a disease through its progression. The company’s goal was to become a fully integrated biopharmaceutical company that could move from drug discovery to development to marketing. But it was increasingly challenging to prioritize and manage programs, personnel and partnerships.

  Keywords: precision medicine; cancer; biotechnology; drug development; Strategy; Expansion; Science; Genetics; Technology; Entrepreneurship; Organizational Culture; Management; Growth and Development; Pharmaceutical Industry; United States; Cambridge; Massachusetts;

  Citation:

  Hamermesh, Richard G., Kathy Giusti, and Susie L. Ma. "Breakthroughs at Blueprint Medicines." Harvard Business School Case 820-001, June 2020.  View Details

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• Case | HBS Case Collection | September 2019 (Revised June 2020)

  Engineering An Inclusive Bioeconomy

  Tarun Khanna, Raffaella Sadun and Susie L. Ma

  In 2019, entrepreneur Juan Carlos Castilla-Rubio was developing a project he hoped could generate and share wealth from the natural resources of the Amazon without destroying those resources. His idea, called Earth Bank of Codes (EBC), would create a library of the genomic codes of all known species that could be tapped for discovery and innovation, from new medical interventions to more efficient manufacturing processes. He proposed to use blockchain technology to make the data both accessible and trackable so that its use could be monitored. Castilla-Rubio envisioned a time when a company in the U.S. could access a biological asset from the Peruvian Amazon, develop and commercialize a product based on the asset, and have a fraction of the resulting sales land directly in the bank account of various beneficiaries, including the Peruvian government and indigenous communities. Now he was facing major decisions about how to structure EBC to achieve his goals. Should he start at the top and build partnerships with national governments and inter-governmental organizations as the cornerstone of EBC? Or would it be better to forge ahead with a few stakeholders in an entrepreneurial project?

  Keywords: Decision Making; Development Economics; Entrepreneurship; Innovation and Invention; Intellectual Property; Emerging Markets; Market Design; Marketplace Matching; Science; Genetics; Natural Environment; Environmental Sustainability; Climate Change; Social Enterprise; Strategy; Strategic Planning; Technology; Ownership; Social Psychology; Trust; Society; Biotechnology Industry; South America; Amazon Basin;

  Citation:

  Khanna, Tarun, Raffaella Sadun, and Susie L. Ma. "Engineering An Inclusive Bioeconomy." Harvard Business School Case 720-356, September 2019. (Revised June 2020.)  View Details

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• Case | HBS Case Collection | December 2018 (Revised April 2020)

  Fluidity: The Tokenization of Real Estate Assets

  Marco Di Maggio, David Lane and Susie Ma

  In December 2018, the blockchain startup Fluidity was about to participate in its first tokenization deal, which would create digital access to property rights in a 12-unit Manhattan condominium complex. The deal was proof-of-concept for Fluidity, which hoped to develop a business digitizing securities issuance for other real estate assets on the basis of its technical facility with blockchain technology, and in conjunction with its broker-dealer partner, Propellr. A successful transaction would only prompt larger and more urgent strategic questions, however. Among them was the appropriate revenue model for Fluidity—whether to grow by providing its technical services to broker-dealers, by going into tokenized securities issuance, or by harnessing its trading technology to facilitate a secondary market in tokenized securities.

  Keywords: Blockchain; tokenization; data security; revenue model; Finance; Technological Innovation; Strategy;

  Citation:

  Di Maggio, Marco, David Lane, and Susie Ma. "Fluidity: The Tokenization of Real Estate Assets." Harvard Business School Case 219-057, December 2018. (Revised April 2020.)  View Details

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