One small step

It was just over 40 years ago that man first landed on the moon. My father was a young lad, but he remembers it like it was yesterday. This single event inspired him to pursue a career in engineering. Many others that had the good fortune to witness such a monumental event were also driven into the sciences. The very idea of space travel was just a fantasy until 1969. Now, we are witness to the after effects of the technological developments that led up to that warm day in July, 1969; the aerospace industry is a monument to that first step on the moon.

Like my father, I was inspired by the biotech revolution of the 1980's. The developments in the biotech arena over the past 3 decades can be directly credited with saving the lives of both of my grandmothers, my grandfather (more than once!), my father (time and time again), and many more that are close to me. Medical doctors can only do so much without the support of the pharmaceuticals that saved all of these lives. So, I realized that the biotech industry was my chance to make a difference in this world. The path in life that I chose has since grown beyond biotech and now I sit at the forefront of tomorrow's technologies across the entire science sector. My passion now is to see these technologies make their way into the hands of customers - the real drivers of the knowledge economy.

There is a problem, however. I have been witness to many technologies that have fallen by the wayside - technologies that could revolutionize the geothermal elctricity generation industry, cure multiple types of cancer, feed mankind for another millennium, and more. Why??? It has nothing to do with the science - these technologies exist and could still dramatically improve upon the technologies currently in use. It has more to do with the fact that these technologies are very expensive to implement, and without an effective means to generate income to recover costs there is no way that these technologies will be put into action. This is just an example where scientists could have benefited with the input from business-minded individuals. Alternatively, business-minded individuals could benefit from working with scientists at the conception stage of a research project.

Over time I hope to elucidate the issues that prevent the world's elixirs from coming into existence. Neil Armstrong did not become a household name by simply taking one small step - it was because he took that famous step on the moon by walking off of the shoulders of giants. In other words, many of the greatest leaps forward were spawned by scientists, but science can only become an innovation when someone is daring enough to take that first step towards delivering the science to the world.