Times they are a' changin'

A question that I like being asked is “Why have you left biology to go to business school?” Until recently, my answer has been a diatribe on the boredom induced by doing thousands of plasmid preps and the fickleness of the funding process. But now, halfway through a business degree, I have a much better answer: “Because the knowledge industry has changed.” As biology is becoming more like other businesses, it has become necessary to acquire some business know-how. The main occupation of scientists is the production of units of knowledge (see Curr Biol 1998, 8:R255). The first stage of this production process involves deciding which units their laboratory should produce. This decision is based on both the core competencies of the laboratory and on identifying unoccupied market niches in which to sell their units. Once this is done, the scientist must decide which bits of data are required to form the desired knowledge units, produce the data, process them into information and interpret the information into knowledge units. Traditionally, these units would be sold directly to scientific journals and conference organisers and their sale rewarded with job offers in good institutes and generous grants. But the production of knowledge units is expensive, in terms of both time and money, and low levels of productivity often have dire consequences when it comes to the next job or grant application. As a result, many laboratories try to minimise the effects of competition through product differentiation. This has resulted in a highly fractionated industry that produces unique units such as ‘The effects of Patagonian snow-snake venom on stomatal closure in a Finnish liverwort’. Occasionally, though, the added value of particularly desirable units tempts laboratories to engage in direct competition. This is usually dealt with by the formation of a collusive agreement, called a collaboration, or, sometimes, the academic equivalent of guerrilla warfare.