If you were an executive at a pharmaceutical or oil company and one of your researchers achieves the holy grail, a cheap, environmentally friendly do it all.

Would you launch it publicly?

1) Assume that your competitors will be able to reverse engineer your tech in weeks
2) Your company and the industry will lose billions due to the irrelevance of all the old existing products.

Alternatively, consider that it was a smaller company that did it.

Would you stop them?

One:
I already have a... source... that can do both things.
Two:
Good luck reverse engineering the math behind it.
Three:
I'd do it.
Four:
???
Five:
Profit.

I believe this scenario was played out in Day of the Triffids with the new Triffid Oil. They murdered the creator.

I'd alter my stock carefully, copyright the process, release it and then retire. No longer my problem and I'll get hailed as a saviour.

And in an interview with the reclusive trillionaire, we managed to get this brief snippet:
"I said to them 'To hell with money, these are people's lives we're talking about here and if the boys down town don't like it. I say 'To hell with the boys down town!'' and they all applauded. Now, would you mind passing me another Pina Colada, Rachel?"

This will be my last interview from CNN as I've a better position right now.

I would not be given the choice to release it if it were alternative energy.

We'd make millions (Nobel prize as well) if we were the pharmaceutical because we could buy out the competition with the initial money and could produce it cheaper due to a headstart. So yes with the cancer.

Yeah, but I'd patent every little thing I could about it thereby preventing my Rivals from manufacturing it even if they could reverse engineer it. I'd then use the profits to buy a country in Eastern Europe.

Patent it, release it. I'm now at the forefront of the fastest growing sector in today's world. And I pretty much own it now, given that my new invention is the best. Lots of money for my company. Good stuff.

You have made a mistake here....

Most of us are either poor or moderate in background, wealth wise. None of us have been brought up in a situation where we would have the CEO power over a major oil industry. None of us have 'sold our soul' to protect shareholder profits or have been corrupted by the lifestyle one lives when you can literally wipe your arse with 100 dollar notes.

So we can't give you that answer, because we all here are guided by a different set of rules, ones which would make us compelled to release such information. Likely in such a way that will ensure the technology is used to the greatest of potential (say free) and sit back waiting for the praise and glory that would come with having such an accoplishment happen under our watch.

Now... reality wise. It would be a rare CEO indeed who didn't bury the information to bleed every red cent out of the current technology. All so the share holders don't kick his arse to the curb and file law suits that will ensure all that luxury and wealth is replaced with a cardboard box no matter how many noble prizes you might win.

Oh, by the way, those would go to the scientist themselves... sorry.

Hmm... 'fire' my discovering scientist so that he is free to release it with no repercussions for me. Being a CEO, and not having law-suits filed against me, I would have more than enough money to live comfortably for the rest of my life, and the rest of the world get renweable energy/ cure for cancer. Personally, I couldn't care less about the shareholders, as I care more about saving the planet and the lives of millions than a few thousand people wanting to get rich.

heyheysg:
If you were an executive at a pharmaceutical or oil company and one of your researchers achieves the holy grail, a cheap, environmentally friendly do it all.

Would you launch it publicly?

1) Assume that your competitors will be able to reverse engineer your tech in weeks
2) Your company and the industry will lose billions due to the irrelevance of all the old existing products.

Alternatively, consider that it was a smaller company that did it.

Would you stop them?

Maybe when close to death.

heyheysg:
If you were an executive at a pharmaceutical or oil company and one of your researchers achieves the holy grail, a cheap, environmentally friendly do it all.

Would you launch it publicly?

1) Assume that your competitors will be able to reverse engineer your tech in weeks
2) Your company and the industry will lose billions due to the irrelevance of all the old existing products.

Alternatively, consider that it was a smaller company that did it.

Would you stop them?

I'd assume my company should have a patent or be able to buy out the small company and take theirs, and be able to exploit the tech for at least ten years before anyone else got it, reverse engineering or not ;)

Seriously though, it's an interesting question. For instance, drugs companies were selling high-price, patented drugs that sorted the symptoms of stomach ulcers (e.g. Zantac) for years, despite knowing it was usually a bacterial infection and could be treated faster with cheap, generic antibiotics.

However, you can't stop technology that easily. If you've found that thing out, you must know it's only a matter of time before someone else does as well. Hence I don't think a company would or could shut that thing down. However, as an exec you have a legal obligation to protect your company and make money for shareholders.

Consequently, I'd sit on that new tech for a few years, massively diversify the company, and then release it so that the company was in a better position to survive it's original industry base being annihilated.

heyheysg:
If you were an executive at a pharmaceutical or oil company and one of your researchers achieves the holy grail, a cheap, environmentally friendly do it all.

Would you launch it publicly?

1) Assume that your competitors will be able to reverse engineer your tech in weeks
2) Your company and the industry will lose billions due to the irrelevance of all the old existing products.

Alternatively, consider that it was a smaller company that did it.

Would you stop them?

You'll find that any cancer drug, or any new drug at all for that matter, is already patented for 20 years before they even do any research on it in cell lines or rats even. Hence your first scenario can't possibly exist. It usually takes 10 years from discovery to marketing of a product and costs roughly 80billion US. Hence the ten years in which pharmaceutical companies have to sell their product with impunity they take advantage of with a vengence and produce incredibly high profit margins out of it before it loses its patent. There would be no reason for them not to release this drug - they'd have a monopoly on it for at least 10 years and would produce billions off it.

Inverse skies speaks the truth.

As for releasing drugs publically, even if it was legal and possible - it wouldn't be a smart choice.

Think about it - who else would fund the development of these drugs? The government? Ahahahaha. While many useful discoveries are first made in labs with government funding, and while government funding of universities and labs is indispensible, the cost of doing Phase I, II and III clinical trials is absolutely immense and takes long enough as it is. If the government gets involved, I can only see it becoming even more expensive and time consuming and taking up a hell of a lot of tax-payer money. The government simply can't afford to take over from the drug companies.

I don't work in drug design myself. My latest lab project is about developing yeast-based assays to screen for non-cytotoxic inhibitors (which have been rationally designed by another lab member, and I have my doubts about the whole rational design process, but we'll see) which could potentially be made into a drug.

But I do know how difficult, expensive and time consuming drug desgin is. The system we have now is by no means perfect. But I can't think of any other, practical, way of doing it. I am a bit of a leftist and I am certainly no "free-market solves everything" kind of guy, but all other options seem to be impractical.

Sell all my stock, resign my position, save the world, live in luxury. Yeah, sounds pretty nice.

Jinx_Dragon:
You have made a mistake here....

Most of us are either poor or moderate in background, wealth wise. None of us have been brought up in a situation where we would have the CEO power over a major oil industry. None of us have 'sold our soul' to protect shareholder profits or have been corrupted by the lifestyle one lives when you can literally wipe your arse with 100 dollar notes.

So we can't give you that answer, because we all here are guided by a different set of rules, ones which would make us compelled to release such information. Likely in such a way that will ensure the technology is used to the greatest of potential (say free) and sit back waiting for the praise and glory that would come with having such an accoplishment happen under our watch.

Now... reality wise. It would be a rare CEO indeed who didn't bury the information to bleed every red cent out of the current technology. All so the share holders don't kick his arse to the curb and file law suits that will ensure all that luxury and wealth is replaced with a cardboard box no matter how many noble prizes you might win.

Oh, by the way, those would go to the scientist themselves... sorry.

Yep, the stockholders will quit while they're ahead and it'll plummet anyway. You'll probably end up slightly higher than you were before.

Inverse Skies:

It usually takes 10 years from discovery to marketing of a product and costs roughly 80billion US.

It's only US$100-200million to get a drug from theory to the pharmacy shelves.

$80billion is about the market capitalisation of a major Pharmaceutical company.

release the information public domain

Agema:

It's only US$100-200million to get a drug from theory to the pharmacy shelves.

$80billion is about the market capitalisation of a major Pharmaceutical company.

(Tries to remember lectures we had on the topic). I seem to think that figure of 100-200 million is too low still... but I can't remember with certainty.

Hmmm lets see, billions of dollars collected annualy from selling my oil, or a few more living polar bears...deffinately a difficult choice for a money grabbing business owner.

Lets face it, for enviromentalism atleast, we could be a perfectly sustainable planet by now, but there are far too many people on the rich end of the scale who lobby to beat down the new ideas.

The_root_of_all_evil:
I believe this scenario was played out in Day of the Triffids with the new Triffid Oil. They murdered the creator.

I'd alter my stock carefully, copyright the process, release it and then retire. No longer my problem and I'll get hailed as a saviour.

Wow, brilliant Ninja on a 60 year old book. Damnit.

Also pretty much what I would do.

Or post it here and watch you race to the copyright ownership.

Sometimes I wonder if Microsoft or Apple actually have 10 or 20 versions of their OS created and are slowly releasing them every couple of years.

The thing with capitalism is that every product only needs to be marginally better than the previous incarnation. (unless it's something new).

There is more profit to be made by releasing things as slowly as you can
1) It prevents the competitors from 1uping you
2) Assuming you make the same amount each time, you get it multiple times