The Life Science Industry Awards

THE ENVELOPE, PLEASE

Not surprisingly, industry heavyweights dominated the voting. Biotech giant Invitrogen of Carlsbad, Calif., led all companies with 13 nominations, winning in seven categories: three for products and four for customer communications and support.

"We are extremely honored to have been nominated as a finalist in 13 different categories of the Life Science Industry Awards," writes Ben Bulkley, senior vice president, global commercial operations at Invitrogen, in an E-mail. (Companies contacted for this article were told only that they were finalists, not whether they had won any awards.) "We have worked continually over the past few years to take a good company and make it great for our customers. To be recognized for this tells us that we are on the right track and encourages us as we strive to make our customers' path to discovery even easier."

Bio-Rad Laboratories of Hercules, Calif., which came in second with eight nominations, won two awards, as did triple-finalist Applied Biosystems of Foster City, Calif. "Applied Biosystems has been serving the needs of the life sciences industry for more than 20 years," says company president Cathy Bruzick in an E-mail. "The company has continually introduced innovative products that become industry standard systems to help customers solve complex biological problems, we feel that our success has largely been based on our relationships with our customers. By listening to, and anticipating, the needs of our customers, we are able to develop solutions that not only meet, but often exceed our customers' expectations," she adds.

GE Healthcare of Chalfont St. Giles, UK, received six nominations, winning one LSIA for protein purification and analysis products. "We are proud to have been nominated by readers of The Scientist in a number of categories for this year's Life Science Industry Awards," says spokesperson Helen Longvill. "It underscores our commitment to developing life science products of real value to researchers. GE Healthcare (formerly Amersham Biosciences) understands customer needs and works to create innovative solutions to meet those challenges."

Sigma-Aldrich of St. Louis, Mo., garnered five nominations and won one LSIA, for best customer service. Mary Bettis, director of customer service in St. Louis, says the company's customer service team focuses on three elements: quality systems, customized service, and efficiency. "All of these concepts are interrelated and work together to create a comprehensive service experience that surpasses the customer's expectations. In essence, our goal is to make it easy to do business with Sigma-Aldrich," she says.

BD Biosciences of San Jose, Calif., received four nominations and took home the award for cell biology instrumentation. David Matsuyama, research instrumentation product manager at BD Biosciences, relates how the company stays at the cutting edge of technology innovation. "Over two years ago, BD's special-order group developed a flow cytometer with the ability to detect up to 18 colors. At the time, the routine number of colors researchers were detecting was four, and some high-end researchers were collecting eight colors. BD Biosciences ... took on the challenge to develop a flow cytometer that was beyond the conception of most people using flow cytometry as a research tool." That effort, he says, galvanized the growth of the multicolor flow cytometry industry.

Qiagen of Venlo, the Netherlands, garnered two nominations. In winning an LSIA for nucleic acid purification and analysis products, the company raked in more than half of all votes cast in that category – the best showing overall for any company in any class. Joachim Schorr, senior vice president for global R&D, explains the company's success in this category: "We have one rule, that we do not compromise on quality before we give out a product."

Also collecting two nominations was Carl Zeiss of Jena, Germany. Zeiss, which won Readers' Choice Awards (predecessors to the LSIAs) in 2002 and 2003, tied with Bio-Rad to win the image-analysis systems category this year. Georg Weiss, director of sales and service for the microscope manufacturer, says, "I think we are the innovation leader, ahead of the competition in terms of features and performance."

Part of Zeiss' success, says Weiss, stems from a different corporate philosophy. "In a couple of microscope companies, it's still the physicists who decide what goes into the product," he says. "At Zeiss, we have the people with the application edge, the biologists, determining features." Zeiss' recent acquisition of Bio-Rad's image-analysis systems poises the company to dominate this category even more aggressively in the coming years.

Accelrys of San Diego won in the Software category. With titles ranging from Insight II and Cerius2 to MacVector and the GCG Wisconsin Package, Accelrys products are installed in public and private laboratories worldwide. "It's extremely rare to find a Life Science institution that isn't using one or more of our tools," says company spokesman Ian Clements. He attributes that market dominance, in part, to Accelrys' corporate philosophy. "We try to provide software solutions to problems, rather than just provide software with a list of features and benefits."

Also taking home LSIAs were Ambion of Austin, Texas, which won for its RNAi products, and New England Biolabs of Beverly, Mass., which was recognized for its print catalog. "I would say our catalog has a Grateful Dead cult-like following," says Jim Ellard, the company's director of marketing communications. With a focus on science – more than half the book is technical information – NEB's catalog is "a catalog you want on your lab bench," not on the shelf, he says.

But just as importantly, NEB's customers have grown accustomed, in the 20 years the company has been printing its catalog, to the book's style and content. "It's like an old friend, you know what you're going to get," says Ellard. And therein lies a lesson that transcends category boundaries: Whatever a company's focus, customer relations often sets a company apart from its competition.

"One of the reasons I believe we're successful is our ability to pull our scientific breadth together in reaction to our customers' needs," says Invitrogen's Bulkley. He cites the company's creation of a biodefense initiative. "We had customers looking to us for solutions in biodefense because we have many of the distinct technical elements needed to succeed in that space, but they found it difficult to put the pieces together themselves." So, he says, the company created an internal, stand-alone group that focuses exclusively on biodefense, "so that we could make sure that we had the right focus to bring the right solutions to our customers."

- Jeffrey M. Perkel jperkel@the-scientist.com, Aileen Constans aconstans@the-scientist.com, Julia Shmirkin j.shmirkin@gene2drug.com