Insights

Perspectives from the field.

No theory for theory's sake. Only what is actually relevant in practice.

26 October 2026

8 min read

Colossal Biosciences in Autumn 2026: Separating the Science From the Story

Artificial eggs, an AI platform for the dodo, a military dog venture with Anduril and talk of a valuation of $20 billion or more: Colossal Biosciences has had a busy autumn. Some of it is real technical progress that matters well beyond de-extinction. Some of it is marketing. A sorting exercise, and what life-science founders can learn from the way Colossal tells its story.

24 October 2026

6 min read

The AI Act Was Delayed. For Your IVD With an AI Component, That Helps Less Than You Think

The Digital Omnibus pushes the AI Act's high-risk obligations to December 2027 and August 2028. For manufacturers of IVDs and medical devices with an AI component, this is a calendar problem, not a content problem: what you decide about data and documentation today has to be verifiable in 2028.

22 October 2026

5 min read

Interim Management in Biotech and Medtech: When It Pays Off

Interim management is a 3.75 billion euro market in the DACH region, and most companies expect more demand for project-based executives. In regulated life science companies there are three situations where interim management is clearly the right tool, and one where it only buys time.

18 October 2026

5 min read

The AI Gap in Your Own Organisation

While the financial press argues about an AI bubble, I see the opposite problem inside organisations: the tools can do more than anyone is using them for. Andrej Karpathy's picture of an AI funnel describes this gap worldwide. Your organisation has the same one, just smaller.

12 October 2026

8 min read

Theranos in Hindsight: The Warning Signs That Were Visible From the Outside

Theranos was not uncovered by an insider leak alone. Several warning signs were public long before the Wall Street Journal's 2015 investigation: no peer-reviewed data, a board without diagnostics expertise, a regulatory route that avoided independent review, and claims that conflicted with basic laboratory science. A look at which signals mattered, and how investors and partners can check for them today.

28 September 2026

7 min read

Built for Uncertainty? ADHD, Entrepreneurship and Leading a Small Company

Entrepreneurship research keeps finding a link between ADHD traits and starting, and sometimes growing, a company. The same traits that help a founder act under uncertainty create predictable management problems once the company has employees, customers and auditors. What the evidence supports, what it does not, and how small companies can design for both sides.

14 September 2026

7 min read

The Best Argument for AI in Biotech Isn't Speed — It's What It Could Do for Rare Diseases

Most conversations about AI in biotech focus on speed and cost for well-funded programmes. The more consequential story is quieter: AI-driven efficiency gains in variant interpretation, natural history data, and regulatory documentation are starting to make rare disease programmes economically viable that would never have been pursued before — and that shift matters most for the diseases the market has always underserved.

24 August 2026

7 min read

Token Maxxing Is a Bad Habit, and Biotech's Data Structures Make It an Expensive One

Stuffing an ever-larger context window with raw data instead of designing a proper pipeline has become a default habit for early AI adopters. In biotech, where datasets are large, structured, and consequential, that habit is not a shortcut — it is a silent source of degraded results, untraceable reasoning, and a compliance blind spot.

3 August 2026

7 min read

Does ADHD Change How Well Someone Works With AI? The Case for a Cautious Yes

A recurring observation from working with R&D and technical teams: some of the fastest, most inventive users of conversational AI tools describe themselves as having ADHD. That is an anecdote, not a finding — but there are real cognitive-science reasons to take the pattern seriously, and equally real reasons not to romanticise it.

13 July 2026

7 min read

Vibe Coding Is Quietly Changing How Scientists Solve Problems — and Not Always Safely

AI-assisted coding has turned scientists who never learned to program into people who ship working automation before lunch. That is a genuine unlock for research productivity. It is also creating a new category of risk in labs that were never set up to govern software the way they govern instruments — and the two need to be addressed together, not separately.

22 June 2026

8 min read

The Uneasy Partnership Between Biotech Research Groups and Tech Transfer Offices at German Universities

A promising discovery in a university lab and a viable spin-off are separated by a process most researchers do not understand and most Tech Transfer Offices are not resourced to accelerate. Why the interplay between biotech research groups and German TTOs is more structurally strained than either side usually admits, and what actually helps.

1 June 2026

7 min read

Claude for Science: A Critical Look at What It Actually Delivers in Biotech R&D

Claude and other large language models are increasingly used for literature synthesis, hypothesis generation, and data interpretation in biotech research. The enthusiasm is understandable. The uncritical adoption is not. A sober look at where these tools genuinely help, where the confidence is misplaced, and what that means for data integrity in a regulated environment.

18 May 2026

5 min read

From Academia to Startup: Five Things Researchers Forget to Think About When Building in Life Sciences

A conversation with two researchers building a diagnostics venture reminded me how much practical groundwork gets overlooked when brilliant science meets an underprepared commercialisation path.

4 May 2026

7 min read

AI Change Management in Life Sciences: Where the Real Opportunities and Risks Are

Adopting AI in a regulated life science environment is not a technology rollout. It is a change management challenge with regulatory obligations attached. This post breaks down where the opportunities are genuine, where the risks are underestimated, and why compliance is not the obstacle most SMEs think it is.

1 April 2026

6 min read

The Difference Between Consulting and Co-Building

Consulting and co-building sound similar. They are not. Understanding the difference helps you make better decisions about what kind of support your organisation actually needs.