OriGene Technologies, Inc., is a gene centric life sciences tool company dedicated to support academic, pharmaceutical and biotech companies for research and drug discovery. Basically OriGene Technologies is a “HomeDepot” for scientists who are building solutions, treatments and cures for cancers, epidemics, diseases and all kinds of human ailments. Our customers are research universities, pharmaceutical/bio-tech companies, federal research institutions, and any other organization trying to unlock the secrets of DNA with biotechnology. No matter where you are in the world, if you are doing bioresearch, we speak your language.
Because we are serving the scientific community we have to hire some of the brightest scientists and technicians in the world. And in order to deliver the kind of quality tools that our customers have come to expect, we have to keep up with the research techniques they are pursuing. They need the right products at the right time and at the right price. Staying at the forefront of our industry means we not only have to get the science right, we have to get the business right.
My job as the Vice President of Human Resources is to build a culture that allows for the science to flourish and still keeps track of the business. Like any company, if we don’t make a profit, we will go out of business no matter how good our product is. Earlier this year I felt that one of our challenges was to help our scientists think more like businesspeople. It wasn’t enough to have a good product; we had to deliver it when the customer wanted it, how the customer wanted it and at a price that the customer felt good about. All of the factors that go into good customer service need to be part of how we do business on a daily basis – and to establish this we needed to create a culture where our scientific leaders start thinking more strategically and become more skilled at being not only world renown scientists, but they needed to become business leaders for our organization
The Nature of Strategic Thinking was an important part of helping our people understand the business end of strategy. We learned the key components to align the operational and scientific side of our business to how the customer defines value. We learned the key principles of business execution and how to evaluate performance based on a strategy. It was the right workshop at the right time to get us thinking about strategic ways to improve how we do our business as well as our science.
