Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Feature
  • Published:

Valuing the product development cycle in agricultural biotechnology—what's in a name?

Would a standard nomenclature for describing the steps in the agricultural biotechnology product development cycle enable better valuation of agbiotech products and the companies that develop them?

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Relevant articles

Open Access articles citing this article.

Access options

Buy this article

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: A comparison of the main activities and timelines associated with product development in biotechnology.

Bob Crimi

Figure 3

Bob Crimi

Figure 4: Binomial decision tree model for a hypothetical agbiotech product using the 'go' decision probabilities outlined in Table 3.
Figure 2

Bob Crimi

References

  1. McElroy, D. Sustaining agbiotechnology through lean times. Nat. Biotechnol. 21, 996–1002 (2003).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  2. Piercey, L. The two-headed beast. Signals Magazine, 21 November 2003, http://www.signalsmag.com/signalsmag.nsf

    Google Scholar 

  3. McElroy, D. Moving agbiotech downstream. Nat. Biotechnol. 17, 1071–1074 (1999).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  4. Boer, F.P. The Valuation of Technology (John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1999).

    Google Scholar 

  5. Stewart J.J., Allison P.N., Johnson, R.S. Putting a price on biotechnology. Nat. Biotechnol. 19, 813–817 (2001).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Mike Lassner, Jack Kiser, Ravi Ramadhar, Scott Deeter, Tom Chromartie and Scott Thenell for their helpful comments on drafts of this article.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

McElroy, D. Valuing the product development cycle in agricultural biotechnology—what's in a name?. Nat Biotechnol 22, 817–822 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt0704-817

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt0704-817

This article is cited by

Search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing