What's better than a successful biotech company? Lots of successful biotech companies, neatly listed in a reliable, user-friendly directory with the potential to spur economic growth in Michigan.
Or that's what Michael Debiak is hoping. Last week, Debiak's privately funded Michigan Life Sciences Network launched the first phase of its three-part plan to put Michigan on the biotech map.
"Michigan is not a default science cluster in the minds of most investors," Debiak says. "What we need to do in Michigan is get on their radar."
The idea is simple - creating a one-stop easy access point for clients in the biotech industry to take a product from research and development to market, using all Michigan businesses.
The first phase of the plan, the Virtual Company Project, launched last week at the Michigan Bio Expo, with Debiak and staff collecting information about the role and function of a wide range of biotech businesses.
The next step, Debiak says, is vetting the info and building a dossier on each company, with the end result a database set for launch in March.
Another part of the process is creating relationships between Michigan companies, he says - "Increasing identifications to the level where they can trust each other and be able to introduce a customer to another life sciences service."
Increasing biotech traffic could yield big results for Michigan.
"We have $4 billion of new life science business coming in each year, and collectively it's in the neighborhood of $20 billion," Debiak says. "With a multiplication of that business that's already here, if we can move that dial by 10 percent we'd be doing a lot."
Source:Michael Debiak, Michigan Life Sciences Network
Writer: Nancy Kaffer
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