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International Companies Find a Gateway to the U.S. at Boston University High tech companies across the Atlantic Ocean and around the world see the Boston University International Incubator Program as a point of entry into the United States. Boston is a prime location and one of the top biomedical hubs in the U.S. Lured by a high concentration of universities, teaching hospitals, biomedical companies, and venture capitalists, companies located in Boston can access networks and gain insight into market needs. 
"There’s a trend toward more entrepreneurial activity originating outside the United States. For those companies to grow, they really need to create a sustainable presence in the U.S that gives them access to the market and a strategy for developing those markets successfully," said Jonathan Rosen, Executive Director of Institute for Technology Entrepreneurship and Commercialization (ITEC) at the BU School of Management. Although there are many ways to expand, creating a U.S. company smoothes the process for receiving FDA approval, raising capital from U.S. investors, getting acquired, or going public on the U.S. stock market. The Spanish company Progenika Biopharma S.A. opened their U.S. subsidiary, Progenika Inc, in February 2007 at the Boston University Business Incubator in a bid to expand outside the European market. A start-up itself, privately-owned Progenika Biopharma was founded in 2000 and is based at the Parque Tecnológico de Bizkaia near Bilbao, Spain. The company develops and manufactures DNA chips for genotyping to help with the diagnosis, prognosis and prediction of drug response for certain diseases. Laureano Simón, founder and CEO of Progenika Biopharma, worked with Clifford Robinson, Director of Business Incubation at Boston University to enter the Business Incubator. Robinson then helped the company by using his network of contacts to recruit a local COO, Richard Lussier, to run the new U.S. subsidiary. Lussier had extensive experience launching biotech start ups and a wealth of knowledge of the U.S. regulatory environment. "When you come to the U.S., you need to not only build your business here, you have to learn how to do business here," said Robinson. The BU Business Incubator and ITEC provide support and can help new companies avoid costly mistakes by leveraging past experience and local networks. "It can be daunting for an overseas company to enter the United States, find space, set up laboratories, navigate the legal and regulatory environments, and begin meeting the right people in their field to do business," said Rosen. "That's where we come in. We have a combination of classroom education, hands-on practical experience, and access to the community." ITEC offers customized programs for technology enterprises based abroad that are interested in entering the U.S. market. The programs can begin before companies come to the U.S. with workshops, conversations, and student-supported projects to help companies decide entry timing, market focus, and regulatory and IP issues. "There are only a few areas in the country that you could say are real biotech meccas and Boston is probably the best," said Lussier, citing the proximity to Boston University, BU Medical School, Harvard Medical School, MIT, the teaching hospitals in the Longwood Medical Area, and the many biomedical companies in the Boston-Cambridge area. When Lussier needed to work with biostatisticians to design clinical trials and interpret the data, Robinson introduced him to Boston University faculty in that area. "Progenika in the States has a two-fold mission," said Lussier. First, the subsidiary markets products developed in Spain, which are often already on the market in Europe. In addition to finding the U.S. niche for each product, Progenika needs to conform to all local government regulations. "The other part of our mission, and this is why we're located in Boston, is taking advantage of the biotech cluster here to evaluate new technologies, new opportunities or unmet needs that we can apply our technology to that may be specific to the U.S." said Lussier. Rather than importing products from Spain to sell locally, Lussier anticipates developing Progenika's own products to sell in the U.S. and Europe. Although the company was incorporated in February, 2007 and Lussier started in late spring, Progenika has already graduated from the BU Business Incubator to a larger office and laboratory space across the river in Cambridge, Mass. "When you bring in a company from oversees, you bring entrepreneurial talent, new technology and the capital that's being invested in the company," said Robinson, who helped Progenika in its search for increased office and laboratory space. "When you build a U.S. company you create new jobs in the high tech sector. For every job we create in the incubator, we're going to create 10 new jobs in the future for Massachusetts and the local economy." The BU Business Incubator provided Progenika with more than the usual shared infrastructure typical of most incubators - it gave the company access to the facilities and resources of Boston University, like connections to professors, library use, and a student intern from the School of Management.
For the semesterlong project, Chatterjee helped the company research a marketing strategy to launch a chip in the U.S. that analyses an individual’s potential metabolic response to a drug based on their DNA. About the size of a microscope slide, Progenika’s chips contain spotted DNA, which are complimentary to sequences in an individual’s genome, allowing chips to decipher the sequence of certain genes in a genome. "Most of things that Professor Russo has been teaching in Starting New Ventures I can go and fit exactly into what I'm doing with Progenika," said Chatterjee. The business plan he created analyzed market entry options, market forces, and possible exit strategies for the product. Chatterjee's background helped him leap into the research for Progenika – his PhD is in molecular biology and biochemistry and he works as a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at the BU Goldman School of Dental Medicine. Providing MBA students with educational opportunities and handon experiences through the incubator companies is a key component of both ITEC and the BU Business Incubator. These experiences range from individual classroom projects like Chatterjee’s to multisemester, interdisciplinary student teams working with a company on an entry strategy before the company comes to the U.S. "At ITEC we can help companies access the U.S. market and at the same time provide educational and training experiences for students who come here to learn how to start companies before they try to do it on their own," said Rosen. |
All students in the BU School of Management course Starting New Ventures, taught by Professor Peter Russo, Director of Entrepreneurship Programs at ITEC, need to create a business plan for their own idea or for an existing company. Although Anirban Chatterjee, a part-time MBA student with a concentration in finance and entrepreneurship, had his own business idea, he decided to work with Progenika to gain experience in the medical device area. 