zlacker

>>modele+(OP)
There is a lot in here but turning a non-profit into a for-profit definitely should be challenged. Otherwise why wouldn't everyone start as a non-profit, develop your IP, and then switch to 'for-profit' mode once you got something that works? You don't pay income taxes and your investors get write offs.

>>silico+z11
Isn't this how drugs get developed? Even worse, the research is done using public funds, and then privatized and commercialized later.

>>jjjjj5+041
The research is an inconsequential percentage of the development cost, essentially a rounding error. Those commercial development organizations foot almost the entire bill and take all of the risk.

>>jandre+qa1
But wouldn't the pharmaceutical companies do it themselves in-house then?

>>jjjjj5+rF1
They do and they would. This is exactly the argument in tech of startup acquisitions. Sometimes it is just simpler and more efficient to outsource the early bits if there is an ecosystem that supports those early bits. The early stages of development, while cheap, often requires something from the team that is not available in a big company. R&D works this way generally.

Transitioning from “nice idea” to “consumer product” is a vast chasm. Most people that do not actually have experience taking things from research to production grossly under-estimate the amount of effort involved. From a purely economic perspective, the “research” part of the total bill is dwarfed by the activity required to turn it into a salable product.