It's Business Time...

And I don't mean in the "Flight of the Concords" sense. What I am referring to is my business-oriented short course that just wrapped up last week and has a name so long, you would think it was a title to one of my blog posts: "Launching the Enterprise: Selected Topics in the Start-Up of a Biotechnology Company." Essentially, in this class we split into a few groups and produced investor presentations about an actual biotech company of which our instructor is currently involved in. Secretly, it seems like an chance for him to gather a bunch of ideas from us before he has to give his own presentation this week, but since the class was so fun and informative, I wont hold it against him.

Now, I don't want to brag, but I must say our presentation was pretty much amazing. We tried a new method of powerpoint presentations that our instructor very quickly introduced. The method is outlined in a book called "Beyond Bullet Points" by Cliff Atkinson of Sociable Media and essentially does away with bullet points and focuses on short descriptions and compelling graphics, leaving the speaker to discuss the details of the presentation. I must say, after watching both traditional and new powerpoint presentations on the same topic (another group also elected to try the new method), I have been converted to to new style. Not converted enough to actually buy the book, but definitely enough to convince Theresa to use it in her upcoming presentation on Genetically Modified food. Her presentation is also pretty slick, and will definitely blow everyone else in her class out of the water. Look out Nash!

Here are a couple of slides from both Theresa and my presentations. The first is from Theresa's presentation and is pretty self explanatory. The second is my slide, which accompanies the section in our presentation that discusses how focusing our drug on a certain type of cancer makes it eligible for Fast Track FDA approval and orphan drug status (I debated whether I should include an orphan in the pic: maybe have Oliver driving the sports car)