At the Bioscience Innovation Centre in Cambridge, researchers not only experiment with groundbreaking drug-discovery technologies, they also participate in a business experiment that investors hope will change the way scientists commercialize their products. For the most part, government or nonprofit groups subsidize biotech incubators in the hope that the incubator will jump-start companies to provide long-term employment and local tax revenues. Scientists get the benefit of capital to seed an idea.
But Medical Marketing International (MMI) Group, also in Cambridge, runs the Innovation Centre for a profit. MMI Group, a publicly traded company, is now evaluating a plan to develop Europe's largest bioscience incubator at a former pharmaceutical research campus outside London and is reaching out to potential partners in the United States.
MMI was cofounded in 1988 by David Best, a former Roche executive, and Margaret Mitchell, a former government information technology expert. It began as a technology development ...
