For the City

A collection of thoughts on my work for the City of New York and beyond, the life sciences and healthcare sectors, issues of public policy, economic development, entrepreneurship and venture capital. Raphael Co-founder, City of New York Early-Stage Life Sciences Fund and Eds & Meds NYC 2020 Portfolio of Initiatives. (Disclaimer: this is an independent blog; views shared via this site do not represent the views of the City of New York, New York City Economic Development Corporation, the City of New York Early-Stage Life Sciences Fund, or my colleagues thereof). (Credit - Header Image: Career affiliation networks in San Francisco life sciences community, Woody Powell, Stanford University)

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In the coming months...(a basic outline)

This is post #5 in a five-part introduction.

There are a number of topics I’d like to write about in the coming months. My aim is to treat each post as a standalone bite-sized piece that could be read on its own, each a min-case for meaningful problem-solving. That said, I also aim to keep a thread of a storyline running through as well, to help show how things changed so dramatically these past few years. So to that end, here’s a basic outline of what I have in mind:

In Section 1, we talk data. This is where I’d like to review the logical, deductive, process by which we first went about tackling our puzzle of a question. There are some important trends and insights we take away from here - about academia, industry, the future of healthcare, about NYC. These insights helped substantiate a lot of the work we ended up doing for the City.

But in Section 2, you’ll see that data was never enough. There were limitations of the data-driven approach, and we found ourselves with a number of unanswered questions. So this is where we engage in some lateral thinking and try to get creative, bringing in perspectives from sociology and human-centered design into the mix. We hone in on the nugget of wisdom that helped shape so much of our thinking: social bonds.

In Section 3, we take this nugget and resculpt it. We resculpt it into a set of rock-solid aspirations. We produce a mission statement in concert with stakeholders across the community. We hit the drawing board, and paint a picture of the City we’d like to build for the future of life sciences and healthcare. This is where our initiatives begin to take shape.

In Section 4, we roll up our sleeves. We get our initiatives off the ground and put them on solid footing. We recruit champions and build stakeholder networks around each effort. We push and push and push from A to B to forge the whole that’s greater than the sum of its parts.

So yea, there's a lot I'm aspiring to put in writing and it won’t be easy. But I hope I’ll be able to write consistently these next few months, and we'll see what comes of it.  If there are specific topics or questions you'd like me to cover, please feel free to let me know. 

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Our Portfolio of Initiatives

This is post #4 in a five-part introduction.

Before digging deeper into the story of how we got here, I’d like to provide an overview of our current work for the City of New York. It’s January 2014. Where are we now?

So over the course of 2012 and 2013, we had the opportunity to launch 5 key initiatives to address important unmet needs among the City’s life sciences and healthcare entrepreneurs. We crafted these initiatives with the explicit goal of building networks on behalf of the community.

Note: Looking forward to writing more about these programs in later posts. In the meantime, I hope an overview and some relevant links provides ample evidence that we weren’t just enamored with abstract ideas and analysis. We took decisive action. We rolled up our sleeves and got things done.

Entrepreneurship Lab

We broke out of the gates with an initiative called the Entrepreneurship Lab. E-Lab for short, has been our intensive training and mentorship program for graduate students and post-docs, scientists, physicians, engineers starting their first new ventures in the life sciences and healthcare. A pool of 20 fledgling companies were recruited from NYC’s academic medical centers last year and again this year, given intensive mini-MBA training on the fundamentals of starting a business, 2 months of one-on-one guidance on their strategic plans and access to a community of experts and mentors from the NYC area (website is at www.elabnyc.com).

SBIR Impact

In our second initiative called SBIR Impact, we built on work we had previously done to help entrepreneurs apply for R&D grants through the federal government’s SBIR program. It turns out that each federal agency is mandated to allocate at least 2.5% of its annual budget to fund research in a small business setting (through the Small Business Innovation Research or SBIR Program) - putting in play a pool of more than $2B for startups every year. Having already run a series of training workshops for the City’s applicants, we took it to the next level by awarding 20 hours of one-on-one assistance to each of 20 high-potential applicants (website is at www.sbirnyc.com).

Harlem Biospace

With Harlem Biospace, we built Manhattan’s first wet-laboratory incubator, a physical environment where high-prospect NYC-based startups could finally take root. We were observing great progress among our E-Lab and SBIR Impact participants. Many were ready to conduct early-stage proof-of-concept research and were looking for space, no more than a bench’s worth. We were inspired by the University of Calfornia’s QB3 incubator network and their “Garage” model, so we found a champion to help us build that model here. 20 companies were selected to join this community in its first year (website is at www.harlembiospace.com).

Pilot Health Tech

As mentioned in a previous post, we were also committed to championing the growing healthcare technology community. With Pilot Health Tech, we launched a competitive funding program to award up to $100K in matching funding to each of 10 companies testing their prototypes within a healthcare setting. We built bridges across a growing pool of technologists and NYC’s robust base of hospitals and medical centers, increasing the rate of adoption and scaling quality innovations (website is at www.pilothealthtechnyc.com).

City of New York Early-Stage Life Sciences Fund

Most recently in December 2013, we launched our signature initiative for the life sciences, a $100M+ funding partnership for new venture creation and the largest entrepreneurial initiative any City has ever seen. As part of this long-term endeavor, we’ve been fortunate to engage major stakeholders from industry, academia, the VC and philanthropic sectors; complementing all of the grassroots work we’ve been leading with our other initiatives (website is at www.nycedc.com/lifesciences).

So yea, these are the five initiatives we rolled out and continue to champion for the City of New York. We made investments in a number of new institutions as well (i.e., New York Genome Center, Mount Sinai Institute of Technology) and have other works in progress.

Bottom line: Not one of these initiatives was accomplished alone. Every initiative required strong social bonds, and was designed to value and help build more social bonds. Each initiative has had its own story. And it’s been extremely exciting to see what’s come of it all.

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The Missing Piece

This is post #3 in a five-part introduction.

Within six months of starting my work with the City, I found myself reading a few articles and books that crystallized a subtler, more interesting aspect to this puzzle of a question. It eventually became clear to me that indeed, there was this one piece of the puzzle that desperately needed attention, a piece that barely seemed to register on most folks’ radars, especially on the radars of government.

And it was this idea of “social bonds”…

The idea of social bonds - of networks, of relationships, in all their shapes and flavors - this idea ended up governing all of my work for the following four years.

I want to show how important these networks are. The question of how healthy and vibrant they are, their different flavors, how to build them, navigate them. Informational networks, institutional collaborations, working teams, shared leadership. Across different stakeholders. The virtues of trust, camaraderie, confidence, and humility these networks beget.

I want to show how central social bonds are and should be to this fundamental question of life sciences and healthcare innovation in New York City (and anywhere for that matter) - I want to show how central they are to cracking any and every meaningful problem. For the longest time, social bonds were just not that strong in New York, at least for the life sciences and healthcare sectors in question here. With the tools at my disposal, I realized this was the idea I wanted to champion. That nothing could be done alone.

So I set out to build networks, long-lasting ones, not for myself but on behalf of the community. I devoted myself to the art of “social architecture”. For this was the nugget of wisdom I realized we needed to enact true sustainable change. Indeed, it gave our team a killer framework and multifaceted approach to solve our puzzle of a question: that is, through social means, through partnership. The idea became a guiding force for how to spend my time and how to craft the right set of initiatives.

Bottom line is we wanted to build a killer ecosystem for life sciences and healthcare entrepreneurship in New York City. By endowing our work with the value of social bonds, we could start painting a picture of what a different future could look like for our community. And we knew without a doubt, what we needed to do to get it done.  In writing this blog, I hope these thoughts come through.

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This Fascinating Puzzle of a Question

This is post #2 in a five-part introduction.

When I joined the City four years ago, I found myself wrestling with this fascinating puzzle of a question: why is it that NYC, in spite of a phenomenal set of ingredients, has never reached the level of a Boston or a San Francisco as a center for high-tech innovation in the health and life sciences - in biotech, in medtech, in health tech? And what could be done about it?

In the coming months on this blog, I’d like to write about this fundamental question. I’d like to discuss the process we used to rip it apart and pull it all back together, our approach to data-driven problem-solving, the huge pluses and minuses of this approach. I’d like to look back on the hidden rocks and gems we ended up uncovering and discovering in the community, the unique opportunities for social design, the lists and lists of stakeholders we were able to mobilize. Most importantly, I’d like to draw attention to a key idea that helped us answer this question and make a difference for the City of New York.

Context: Infrastructure Needs

First some context. So I wasn’t the first person to get puzzled with this fundamental question. There had always been a recognition that NYC was preeminent in terms of its academic research and clinical care assets, that for some goshforsaken reason, just wasn’t on the commercial side. In the first few months on the job, I found myself attending one panel after another on the topic. Left and right, over and over again I heard the same old thing, “real estate is too expensive in New York City”, “New York is an expensive place to live,” cost of real estate this, cost of living that. To be sure, these have been persistent barriers for New York and don’t quite make for the most hospitable environment for building new companies. Thing is, I was never someone to value money much and was skeptical of what cheaper space or subsidies could ever accomplish. These were important factors, yes. But I wasn’t convinced it would be enough. Something else was missing.

Now the City had mobilized considerable resources on this question through NYCEDC (New York City Economic Development Corporation). As a public entity, NYCEDC’s mandate had always been to manage the real estate assets for the City of New York. As such it would traditionally deploy real estate as the main lever for economic development: identifying an unmet need in the community (say for a waterfront park or small business district), designating a set of City-owned land, and through a competitive RFP, securing a partner in the private sector to develop the land on the City’s behalf. In the case of life sciences, the notorious unmet need had always been for wet commercial laboratory space. And the answer from EDC was a major research and laboratory complex in Manhattan called East River Science Park (now called the Alexandria Center for Life Sciences). When I joined, this project was well under way.

So yea, that was the backdrop. And in the year that I’d arrived, the EDC was beginning to think beyond these types of large-scale capital-intensive projects, to focus on other levers beyond real estate for economic development. In a variety of sectors, the EDC was starting to deploy more grassroots low-cost initiatives like competitions and incubators, to target the specific needs of startups and entrepreneurs.

At the same time, we were beginning to expand the scope of our work beyond pure biotech, to think about other related disciplines, more capital-efficient shorter-time-horizon opportunities like healthcare IT, bioinformatics, diagnostics.

Context: Portfolio of Initiatives Approach

This expanded “portfolio of initiatives” approach was most certainly a move in the right direction. After all, if we go back to this question of what it takes to build a life sciences and healthcare startup hub in NYC, we are truly dealing with a beast of a puzzle, profoundly complex and unyielding to any single answer. Yes, an obsession with real estate would only take us so far.

So I liked this alternative approach and ran with it. I gave it my all trying to spot unmet needs, figure out what specific things we could do for the community. I read every report I could get my hands on, I crunched numbers left and right, thought about it on the train, in the shower, when I went to bed. I met with anyone and everyone, asked them every question, listened to what they had to say.

Yes, we were on the right track. We were spotting unmet needs.  The research was illuminating and the ideas were energizing; and I was excited to think through the ways we could support our local entrepreneurs.

But in spite of all this though, it seemed like we needed to take our thinking yet another step further. If we were really going to change the game for New York City, I was convinced we needed a killer answer to this puzzle of a question. Why after all, why hadn’t these unmet needs ever been addressed before?

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To the health & life sciences community in NYC (and beyond)

This is post #1 in a five-part introduction.

About four years ago, I had the opportunity to join the City of New York as a public servant. The task at hand was to help the Mayor design an economic development strategy for the life sciences and healthcare sectors in New York City.

What’s come of the past few years has turned into a cool story and I’d like to share it.

It is a story about science, innovation and entrepreneurship, community, government and public service. It is an experience that’s been both intellectually stimulating and emotionally fulfilling.

It revolves around this fascinating puzzle of a question. With answers that have important implications in my humble opinion, for the future of our community and the future of our country.

It is a story about values. There are lessons about patience, risk-taking, leadership, and teamwork. It has taught me in full force the power of social bonds, story-telling, inspiration, of fusing ideas, the importance of life-long learning and long-term thinking.

It is a case study on getting things done - big things. Practical brass-knuckle takeaways about turning thought into action. Crafting an idea, building a team, executing a vision, making a real difference that stands the test of time. Using tools, frameworks, metrics, good old lists to drive concrete change.

In sum, it is a humbling story. Clarifying, edifying in its lesson that things just take time. How no one person can achieve anything alone. How it fundamentally takes a village to make a difference, strong social networks built on trust and faith.

I’d like to share these thoughts. At the very least, it’ll help crystallize things in my own head. But it’s also my hope that by walking through this experience, documenting what I’ve learned these past few years, it can help the City build a formidable force for serving patients through innovation, and create a whole that’s greater, more durable than the sum of its parts.

Thanks in advance for hearing me out. Excited for what’s to come.