Consortia as Technology Innovation Management Vehicles: Toward a Framework for Success in Venture Based Public-Private Partnerships

The purpose of this research was to explore the approach by federal/state agencies, university, and private sector consortia to develop and manage commercialization of innovation technologies. The evaluation, support, and management of technologically based consortia has traditionally been held in the private sector. There is a somewhat mature literature guiding innovation management (Utterback 1996; Rosenberg et al. 1994; Quinn 1997, 1992) in the private sector. However, there is an increasing emergence of consortia consisting of universities, industrial/private sector entities, and government agencies joining in collaborative efforts to launch technology based initiatives. These consortia are non-traditional and the applicability of traditional venture models is questionable. The guidance and maturity of the literature for assessment and management of these new consortia is sparsely developed. The specific research questions explored in this research are: (1) What are the major sources of consortia support for innovative technology based new ventures that seem to work? And, (2) What approaches to managing the commercial viability of advanced innovative technology-based new ventures through partnerships of industry, governmental agencies, and universities are effective? The research used an embedded case study method (Yin 1994) to explore the research questions. Consortia development of technology innovation projects, by a state government agency located in the southeastern United States, was selected as the focus of the case study. Four independent projects launched by the consortia were select as embedded units of analysis for the case development. The research was conducted in three phases. In Phase I the literature was reviewed and a framework for assessment of new ventures was developed. In Phase II, the framework was used to guide data collection and the formation of the case data base. Qualitative analysis methods (Patton 1990) were used to analyze transcripts from sixteen semi-structured interviews of consortia partners and project documents. The data analysis from this phase produced an embedded unit of analysis summary for each consortia project. These summaries were validated for each of the four units analyzed and added to the case database. In the third phase, the case was constructed and validated by consortia members from the government agency responsible for consortia assessment. The research produced an in-depth case study for the unique development and considerations for university, government agency, and private industry consortia in relation to traditional assessment models and considerations for private sector ventures. In addition, directions for future research involving the assessment, development, and management of university, industry, and government consortia were developed

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Mortality after surgery in Europe: a 7 day cohort study

Background: Clinical outcomes after major surgery are poorly described at the national level. Evidence of heterogeneity between hospitals and health-care systems suggests potential to improve care for patients but this potential remains unconfirmed. The European Surgical Outcomes Study was an international study designed to assess outcomes after non-cardiac surgery in Europe.Methods: We did this 7 day cohort study between April 4 and April 11, 2011. We collected data describing consecutive patients aged 16 years and older undergoing inpatient non-cardiac surgery in 498 hospitals across 28 European nations. Patients were followed up for a maximum of 60 days. The primary endpoint was in-hospital mortality. Secondary outcome measures were duration of hospital stay and admission to critical care. We used χ² and Fisher’s exact tests to compare categorical variables and the t test or the Mann-Whitney U test to compare continuous variables. Significance was set at p<0·05. We constructed multilevel logistic regression models to adjust for the differences in mortality rates between countries.Findings: We included 46 539 patients, of whom 1855 (4%) died before hospital discharge. 3599 (8%) patients were admitted to critical care after surgery with a median length of stay of 1·2 days (IQR 0·9–3·6). 1358 (73%) patients who died were not admitted to critical care at any stage after surgery. Crude mortality rates varied widely between countries (from 1·2% [95% CI 0·0–3·0] for Iceland to 21·5% [16·9–26·2] for Latvia). After adjustment for confounding variables, important differences remained between countries when compared with the UK, the country with the largest dataset (OR range from 0·44 [95% CI 0·19 1·05; p=0·06] for Finland to 6·92 [2·37–20·27; p=0·0004] for Poland).Interpretation: The mortality rate for patients undergoing inpatient non-cardiac surgery was higher than anticipated. Variations in mortality between countries suggest the need for national and international strategies to improve care for this group of patients.Funding: European Society of Intensive Care Medicine, European Society of Anaesthesiology