MCW’s Clarke Wants to Build Critical Mass of Medical Entrepreneurs
Summary
MCW’s Clarke Wants to Build Critical Mass of Medical Entrepreneurs Xconomy Wisconsin — For academic researchers trying to turn an idea into a business, it’s easy to get caught up in the discovery’s “cool” factor and overlook the fact that it needs to be something people will pay money for.Clarke has earned the street cred to make those judgments and understands the steps it takes to achieve commercial success, he says.He led R&D efforts for Amersham Health, which was later acquired by GE Healthcare, which named him executive vice president and chief medical officer in 2004.He has been quietly helping MCW’s research commercialization efforts for about a year, but the newly created position wasn’t made official until April.Clarke says his goal is not so much to focus on boosting MCW commercialization statistics as to provide support for faculty researchers, foster a self-sustaining entrepreneurial climate, and help mold promising ideas so that they’ll pass muster with investors.