Sometimes, the Medium is the Mission

Not having to answer to Wall Street’s all-too-often unreasonable expectations can be a powerful incentive for an organization to shed its for-profit status. I suspect that is what’s behind a Connecticut biotech industry group’s decision to create a nonprofit arm dedicated to developing pharmaceuticals for Third World countries.

New Haven-based CURE has quietly spun off a nonprofit company, Developing World Cures Inc., that intends to develop low-cost pharmaceuticals for people in the world’s poorest countries.

The idea is to produce drugs that for-profit companies have found too risky as investments, while also developing Connecticut’s biotechnology industry, CURE’s main purpose.

Drug development is extraordinarily costly, and most leads simply do not pan out. It’s not hard to imagine why a biotech researcher might want to focus his efforts without Warren Buffett hanging over his shoulder. Talk to scientists — and I have, often, for years — and they’ll often tell you that what motivates them is improving the human condition in some way. If that doesn’t sound like mission, I don’t know what does.

Hat tip to Mike Burns at Nonprofit Board Crisis. | 501(c)