"Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door." attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1889

There isn't much that will get a marketing professional more worked up than to repeat Emerson's supposed 19th century dismissal of the need for marketing and sales. But their complaints are not just self-serving indignation. Research on failed companies throughout the 20th century shows endless examples of bankruptcies caused by a failure to get the product effectively to market. Apple computers is a famous modern example of a company which is generally recognized to have a better product, but has not performed as well as a competitor with better sales and marketing.

With the completion of a research structure in bioscience, Prince Edward Island has created an enviable generator of great product ideas, but that won't be enough to build a viable industry sector. The bioscience industry is now emerging at the world stage level, and P.E.I. will have to compete with companies all over the globe in turning those great ideas into products somebody is paying for. Central to that success will be effective marketing and sales.

Only one in 10,000 chemical compounds discovered ever makes it to the market.

"In the bio-pharmaceutical, pharmaceutical world, one out of 10,000 new chemical compounds or drugs that are discovered in the science phase ever see the light of day in the market, so it's a very high risk area," says Tony Lucas, a P.E.I.-based bioscience business consultant.

"Some of the current figures for biotech startups are [that] less than one in ten that start out with a bright idea ever become a viable company."

Lucas came to P.E.I. in 2000 from Boston where he was a senior sales executive for Millipore, one of the world's top companies for biopharmaceutical purification technologies. He joined Diagnostic Chemicals, an Island company which had been operating in the pharmaceutical sector since it was founded in 1970, and became CEO of a new division. That division, BioVectra, was meant to move Diagnostic Chemicals up the supply chain of the industry, providing more refined products for the pharmaceutical industry.

Lucas saw that he had two important jobs to do in leading BioVectra. The company was already strong in science, but it needed to develop ways to mass-produce the compounds in those products. Secondly, it needed to sell those products to the world. The first was an engineering problem, the second a marketing one, but for both, he was going to need to recruit specialized personnel.

"It was a challenge. I would say the talent pool, especially on the process development and manufacturing engineering side, is limited. We really had to look outside of the province for a number of positions that were required," says Lucas.

One problem with recruiting was the limited number of opportunities available on P.E.I. DCL was seen as a standalone shop, and anyone coming to the company felt they had to stick with that company or move away again.

Russell Kerr

With more growth in the sector, that has started to change. It is an illustration of why a cluster can grow more successfully than a single company.

While it was difficult, Lucas felt he had some success with recruiting on the engineering side. Sales and marketing was more difficult, and the company had to rely heavily on Lucas's own experience in that area, both directly and for internal training.

Sales and marketing continues to be a weak part of human resources for the bioscience sector. An analysis commissioned by the BioAlliance of human resources in the sector in the fall of 2005 found less than five per cent of people in the sector were involved in customer-related work. Other crucial areas, such as regulatory compliance and intellectual property, were also very weak.

"The real challenge and opportunity is going to be taking all of that good science that would be laying on the table and creating products and services out of it that can be delivered to the customer," Lucas says.

"That space between the science and the product or service in the customer's hand is the chasm."

Recruitment of the engineering and sales professionals required to turn good science into good business will depend largely on convincing those people being recruited that there are good opportunities in P.E.I. On the science side, researchers have been convinced of the opportunity, partly by the establishment of the new NRC (National Research Council) institute. Engineers and sales professionals will be convinced when they see successful companies established on the island, or companies that have strong prospects for growth.

Growth prospects rely on good ideas and the right people to implement them. Bringing those two together takes money, often big money, in the tens of millions of dollars. It's not the kind of money the provincial government or ACOA (Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency) is likely to provide. Companies will need to turn to the private sector, and here is another challenge: P.E.I. has no recent history of attracting that level of investment dollars.