Incubating a biotech company on Long Island and making sure that the company remains in the region are separate challenges. Diane Fabel notes the importance of being able to monitor new methods and technologies as they emerge from faculty research and of thinking long before commercialization about who might lead a company based on this or that discovery, and what that company’s needs might be. At many institutions, the tech transfer office will simply look for the best immediate licensing deal, because their mission is to facilitate development of the discovery, not specifically to keep discoveries and associated business ventures local. Additional infrastructure needs to be in place, which costs additional time and money.
