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The time is ripe for an ethics of entrepreneurship

Nature Biotechnology volume 32, pages 316–318 (2014)Cite this article

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To the Editor:

Entrepreneurship has been hailed as an important engine for economic growth, productivity, innovation and employment. During the recent economic crisis, entrepreneurship has been cited as the key to reducing unemployment, unleashing the potential of the social economy, and delivering on the promise of new biomedical and green technologies (http://www.oecd.org/cfe/leed/leedprojectsyoucanjoinin2011-2012.htm). In higher education, entrepreneurship programs have become the fastest-growing field of study on campus and have resulted in the emergence of a new academic discipline1. Driven by the US Bayh-Dole Act of 1980—which gives ownership of intellectual property to federally funded universities—and deep government funding cuts facing their researchers, research universities are increasingly using industry support to sustain research projects. They promote technology transfer as a means of justifying public support. The tone from Washington supports these trends. The alignment of key interests enables the development of new drugs and the creation of new bioindustries, and helps advance new initiatives, such as the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, which Francis Collins calls a “new paradigm for translational research that involves government, academia, industry, philanthropy and patient advocacy groups”2.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Biomedical Ethics, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA

    Christopher Thomas Scott, Emily L Borgelt & Sandra Soo-Jin Lee

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  1. Christopher Thomas Scott
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  2. Emily L Borgelt
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  3. Sandra Soo-Jin Lee
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Correspondence to Christopher Thomas Scott.

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Scott, C., Borgelt, E. & Lee, SJ. The time is ripe for an ethics of entrepreneurship. Nat Biotechnol 32, 316–318 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt.2867

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