By Brian E. Clark
For WisBusiness.com
MADISON — Consolidation in the life science industry may be running strong, but Bill Linton, founder of Promega, said he believes there will still be a role for independent companies like his.
Speaking to the 2013 Bioscience Vision Summit gathering at Madison’s Monona Terrace, Linton said start-ups will also have a role in the industry. More than 520 people attended the Wednesday conference, up from 500 last year, said Bryan Renk, executive director of BioForward.
Linton said big biotech firms have been gobbling up smaller ones for three decades, he said.
“Just because larger companies are getting larger doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot of room for both small start-up companies in niche markets to do extremely well, as well as companies of our size to maintain a good business proposition for many years,” he said.
“But you have to be very careful not to put too much emphasis on the technology of today. We have to be vigilant on the rapid changes in technology.”
He said he was enamored in the mid-1980s with graphic user interface of Windows, which he thought would be “transformational.” And while most of the company accepted it, the last department to do so was research and development.
“We had to drag them kicking and screaming into the world of Windows,” explained Linton, who said he knew he wanted to be a scientist from an early age. “And we are a life sciences company. But we’re OK now. What it shows is that people want to hang on to what they know.”
He predicted communication technology will transform the biotech world.
“We are getting into the electronic lab notebook and things of that sort,” he said. “It’s not too hard to take the advances and technological improvements that have been made in other industries and see how they will become a tremendous help in life sciences, whether its mathematics, data analysis or communications. …
“It just takes chemists and biologists sometimes a little longer to get there,” he said to chuckles. “But I think we have a pretty good path of what’s going to be increasingly important in life science.”
Linton, whose Fitchburg-based firm has more than 1,200 employees and annual sales of $335 million, is 65. But he said he has no plans to sell the privately held company he started in 1978 in borrowed lab space at UW-Madison.
“I plan to keep the company private,” he said. “I do not want to be bought out. Some executives want to do that so they can play more golf. Fortunately, I never took up golf.”
In a separate talk, Jeff Trewitt of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufactures of America organization, said clinical research trials conducted in the state are a major source of jobs, tax revenue and research spending.
He said a study by the Battelle Technology Partnership Practice showed that in 2011, the industry supported more than 48,000 jobs in Wisconsin and that wages and benefits in the biopharmaceutical sector resulted in $28 million in state taxes and $165 million in federal taxes.
In addition, he said biopharmaceutical firms directly generated $4.5 billion in goods and services in Wisconsin and supported another $4.8 billion in products and services through its vendors and suppliers.
Trewitt said his group did the report to show Wisconsin policymakers and legislators the importance of the biotech industry to the state’s economy.
“I don’t think they understand just how much of an impact biopharmaceutical companies have on Wisconsin,” he said.
“They benefit patients and the state’s economy while helping to advance science. We know they are aware of the biopharmaceutical presence, but these numbers show what a profound impact it has.
“We’d like them to maintain an atmosphere in Wisconsin that is conducive to the continuation of clinical research with policies that provide incentives and to encourage companies and clinicians to partnerships in the state.”
