Smaller Start-ups Research Articles

Neumora launches with $500 million

In one of the largest biotech debuts this year, Neumora Therapeutics has raised $400 million in series A financing from more than a dozen venture capital firms, plus $100 million from Amgen. The firm’s goal: precision small-molecule therapies for a multitude of brain diseases. The start-up was quietly founded in late 2019 by several people at Arch Venture Partners, neurobiologist Morgan Sheng of Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and others. The company has since grown to a team of 90 people based at sites just outside Boston and San Francisco. Neumora has acquired four smaller start-ups that will help it hit the ground running. It has eight drug programs, plus a research collaboration with Amgen on additional programs for brain diseases including amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and schizophrenia. CEO and cofounder Paul L. Berns says the company is based on advances in neuroscience disease biology and computational data science. Neumora

Development & validation of a robust commercial solution for measuring residual kanamycin-resistant plasmid DNA

<h3>Watch the video or read the poster to learn:</h3> <ul><li>Current regulatory guidance for residual plasmid DNA</li><li>Development and validation of a highly robust multiplexed qPCR assay for the quantitation of residual plasmid DNA carrying kanamycin resistance genes</li></ul><div class="authors authors-lg"><div class="author"><div class="author-img"><img src="https://bioinsights.blob.core.windows.net/uploads/Tania-pic-GrandCanyon copy.jpg" data-image="1"></div><div class="author-det"> <b>Tania Chakrabarty</b> is driven by a passion to improve human lives and precision medicine using cutting-edge research and new technologies. Dr Chakrabarty earned her PhD in Biophysics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she studied the structure-function relationship of the muscle protein myosin using fluorescence spectroscopy. Over the last decade, Dr Chakrabarty has led R&amp;D organizations developing clinical diagnostics and RUO products at both large companies and smaller startups. She has earned several awards in her career and is an author of multiple patents. She currently leads the Pharma Analytics R&amp;D team at Thermo Fisher Scientific, overseeing the development of quality and safety testing solutions for biopharmaceutical products </div></div></div>

Breakdown of Business and Workers in India: Impact of Corona Virus

How to keep the workforce safe from Covid-19 without disrupting business is that the key concern before Indian startups today. Not surprising, given the rampaging disease, the country’s subpar internet infrastructure, and looming cyber security threats. Taking a leaf out of China’s playbook, e-commerce major Flipkart has made it mandatory for its Bengaluru headquarters employees, between 8,000 and 10,000, to figure out of home for 3 days every week starting March 11.Over half-a-dozen other smaller startups are exercising similar precautionary measures. To help young teams battle the crisis, a rulebook titled “COVID-19 Precautions” is being circulated among the startup crowd on Twitter. The document, prepared by member of the community themselves, shares update on coronavirus recommends precautionary steps and also lists hospitals, among other things. The world health organization has declared Covid-19 an epidemic. So far, over 126,000 people are infected by corona virus globally and quite 4,600 have died. In India, 73 positive cases of coronavirus are confirmed thus far given magnitude of its spread, no amount of caution is often enough. Under these circumstances and during a country where work-from-home remains a nascent idea, adapting to the new practice will end up being an enormous challenge. India is among the 15 most affected economies because of the coronavirus epidemic. The trade impact of the coronavirus epidemic for India is estimated to be about 348 million dollars and therefore the country figures among the highest 15 economies most affected as slowdown of producing in China disrupts world trade, consistent with a UN report.

Cultural aspects of organizational agility affecting digital innovation

The purpose of this study is to understand how the cultural aspects of organizational agility affect digital innovation capability. In the context of increasing demand for fast-paced digital innovation, organizational agility becomes strategically crucial for large incumbent companies to increase their competitiveness. The literature on organizational agility shows that incumbents, with their vast access to resources, still can have limited ability to innovate and respond to change. This is in sharp contrast to startups, who sometimes are impressively innovative despite their very limited resources. Sometimes the incumbents are even outcompeted and disrupted by startups because of their ability to embrace change, and rapidly seize new business opportunities. However, we know little about why some incumbents are not able to use their resources efficiently for digital innovation and why some smaller startups can transcend these resource limitations. In this context, we find that cultural aspects are especially crucial as enablers for organizational agility in digital innovation. We designed a comparative study to investigate the differences in the influence of culture on organizational agility; and how it hinders or enables digital innovation, at both incumbent firms and startups in the automotive industry. We applied a qualitative research approach and selected semi-structured interviews as our main research method. The Competing Values Framework was used as a tool to categorize different cultures that affect organizational agility, but also to identify how and when tensions between values supported or hampered the organizations’ ability to innovate. Our findings show that, while a blend of Hierarchy and Market cultures inhibited the innovation capability, Clan and Adhocracy cultures promoted innovation. In our sample, the incumbents predominantly adhered to the first two cultures, while the startups typically belonged to the second group. The most successful startups were even able to create a combination of Clan and Adhocracy cultures — a concept we here term ‘Agile culture.’ This culture allowed them to reach a beneficial state of digital innovation growth. When it comes to the implications for research and practice, we found the need to analyze the role of culture for organizational agility; and how to utilize culture as an asset to enable digital innovation growth. One contribution is the identification of ‘Agile culture’ that is an amalgamation of Clan and Adhocracy culture. The value agile culture creates when applied, enables organizational agility, which can enhance digital innovation capability.

The Fusion Underground.

The article reports on the emergence of startups that focus on using fusion to generate clean energy. Topics discussed include the major fusion projects that have failed to generate the needed energy, such as the National Ignition Facility (NIF) and ITER, the reasons why scientists believe that smaller startups, such as Alpha Energy and General Fusion, may have a better chance at success than NIF and ITER, and the environmental and capacity advantages of fusion energy over other energy forms.

The constant evolution of business sources: Entrepreneurial spirit in the midst of consolidation

An overview of the history and evolution of business information, including a typology of players, sources, and information delivery. News aggregators bringing together regional sources, databases publishers packaging information available on individual websites and from filings, and companies creating electronic repositories of paper and other dispersed documents undoubtedly resulted in larger entities. But while stronger providers acquired smaller niche players and startups, these acquisitions encouraged new players. Vested former executives who cashed out started new niche companies or joined smaller companies. Boosting this bubbling up of new players are the regulators, who are supporting middle-tiered players in their growth as competitors. The prediction is that while high-end aggregators will continue to sell value-add products with all available content for high prices and will pay to acquire content and technology, smaller companies will continue to arise in order to grow and compete or sell to the big guys. And individual sources will still be available, and usually easier to find and retrieve.