Going Newsletter-only for a while
Scaling Biotech
by Jesse Johnson
1y ago
Based on a combination of how long it takes me to write my monthly long-form blog posts, and the number of people who end up reading them compared to my short weekly newsletter, I’ve decided to take a break from the blog. I’ll be spending the extra time on a couple of ideas I have in the works, that I hope I can tell you about soon. In the mean time, I’ll continue to write short weekly posts on the newsletter, exploring ways to better integrate data teams into biotech organizations. You can sign up here, or click “Let me read it first” to see all my past posts without signing up: Scaling Biote ..read more
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The Minimum Viable Change
Scaling Biotech
by Jesse Johnson
1y ago
To effectively integrate a data team into a biotech organization, you need to simultaneously build the technical infrastructure that will allow them to work and the organizational infrastructure that will allow them to collaborate. But you can’t do this all at once: You need to slowly but surely nudge things in the right direction with a series of changes. In this post, I want to explore what those changes should look like to get you to your goal as fast as possible. If this idea resonates with your own experience, please let me know in the comments below. Also consider signing up for my  ..read more
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Building Consensus in a Biotech Organization
Scaling Biotech
by Jesse Johnson
2y ago
Image by Niek Verlaan from Pixabay In my last few posts, I’ve been exploring how differences in mental models can get in the way of integrating data teams into a biotech organization. It’s been a lot of doom and gloom. But it’s finally time to shift gears and start exploring solutions. So in this post, I want to describe an approach that I’ve found effective to get a diverse group of people onto the same page about a specific decision or plan that will address the sorts of problems I discussed in my posts on sharing data between the bench and data teams, and sharing insights from the data team ..read more
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Changing Mental Models
Scaling Biotech
by Jesse Johnson
2y ago
In my last few posts, I’ve been exploring how building shared mental models is key to integrating data teams into biotech organizations, particularly “tech biotechs” that have a significant AI/ML component. I’m working towards a series of posts about specific things you can do to help build these SMMs, but before we get there I want to discuss how individuals change their mental models, and what can get in the way of this happening. In this post, I’ll cover two frameworks: First, I’ll summarize a model from the study of adult cognitive development that describes the different relationships peo ..read more
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ML vs Wet Lab: The Great Impedance Mismatch
Scaling Biotech
by Jesse Johnson
2y ago
In my last couple of posts, I discussed how different mental models between digital and wet lab teams cause friction in the flow of information across biotech organizations, particularly for so-called tech biotechs that rely on extensive collaboration between the two. In this post, I will explore how it impacts the second leg of the information cycle between the two teams: Deciding which questions/problems to try to answer and how they can fit together into a research pipeline. Rather than dive straight into the differences between the mental models, I want to start by understanding the contex ..read more
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A better ELN won’t solve your problems
Scaling Biotech
by Jesse Johnson
2y ago
In my last post, I argued that a lack of shared mental models is one of the biggest problems facing tech biotechs because it impedes the cycle of information flow between wet lab and digital teams. This time, I want to explore the first branch of that cycle: How data and metadata get from the lab to an analysis-ready form. And I’m going to do it by examining the software that’s typically used in the lab, through the lens of the mental models that the software both relies on and reinforces. Everyone loves to talk trash about ELNs and LIMS, and despite what the title of this post might suggest ..read more
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The Giant Hidden Problem Plaguing Tech Biotechs
Scaling Biotech
by Jesse Johnson
2y ago
I’ve spent much of the last few years thinking about how to integrate data teams into biotech organizations, mostly circling around an idea I couldn’t quite put my finger on. But I recently learned it has a name: Shared Mental Models This is pretty much what it sounds like: Everyone brings their own set of mental models to the work that they do, mostly based on their experience and their educational background. For a highly-interdisciplinary team to function, its members need to adjust these individual mental models, or adopt new ones, to be closer to each other. The overlap of what they end u ..read more
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Year-end Summary 2021
Scaling Biotech
by Jesse Johnson
2y ago
Image by hudsoncrafted from Pixabay I started writing this blog in early 2020, but it was only this year that I started writing regularly, here and on my newsletter. When I started, I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to write about, or why I wanted to write it, beyond generally wanting to get back into blogging. But I figured if I just started writing, I would eventually figure it out. (This is a well established strategy, not a new idea.) Well, it worked more or less. It ended up being a great way to collect my thoughts, figure out some themes that I care about, and even learn a few things ..read more
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A platform story reference guide
Scaling Biotech
by Jesse Johnson
2y ago
Image by FelixMittermeier from Pixabay Scaling a biotech organization requires you to communicate a vision, a design and a plan to an organization full of people with diverse backgrounds and mindsets. In the past two posts I explored how stories can help you do this by communicating different pieces of a larger “universe” packaged in a compelling form. As I’ve had different opportunities to tell stories like this, I find that one of the hardest parts is to decide which part of the universe to package into a given story. And even when I figure it out, there are always questions about the parts ..read more
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Structuring communication with stories
Scaling Biotech
by Jesse Johnson
2y ago
Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Scaling a biotech platform requires getting a group of people from different backgrounds and perspectives to understand a common vision and plan. But it can sometime be difficult to recognize where the differences and gaps are. So, how can you make sure you’re communicating all the things that you take for granted, but others might not? It turns out that thinking of your communication in terms of stories can help fix this. In this post, I’ll discuss how. Setting the frame When we discuss a project, a problem, an objective an outcome, etc. there’s usually a ..read more
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