Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation and BioForward brought representatives from local businesses together to discuss Wisconsin’s potential environment for high-tech business at a panel Thursday.

According to Lisa Johnson, CEO of BioForward, Wisconsin already has a lot going for it, and the biotech companies in Wisconsin benefit from the strength of the university. She said University of Wisconsin has strong skill sets available that would benefit the state biotech industry.

Wisconsin bioscience industry plans to promote national potential

Entrepreneurons, the short lecture series cohosted by WARF and BioForward, hopes to give students the fundamental tools and knowledge to launch and sustain new ventures at UW.

A panel representing some of Wisconsin’s businesses shared their stories about establishing life science businesses in Wisconsin. Topics ranged from personal experience with business mergers and acquisitions to undergoing periods of necessary downsizing and growth.

Nicholas Caruccio, general manager of Epicentre, Kaz Hirao, CEO of Cellular Dynamics, Andrew Kirkpatrick, senior vice president of global operations and corporate development at Accuray and Scott Johnson, vice president of assay research and development at Lumina Corporation served as panelists.

Speakers discussed their aspirations to collaborate on a much larger scale among the life science businesses in the state.

The panelists unanimously agreed that Wisconsin has the resources and environment to attract and retain the high-quality talent necessary for their enterprises to succeed.

The panel discussed the importance of building a new narrative. It aims to sell Madison as a place that possesses the knowledge and sustainability to launch new ventures and is open to new business.

It also spoke about the importance of forming good credibility and trust in order to successfully attract a new merger or acquisition.

Kaz noted the success of Singapore, saying that there is an integrated system founded on strong collaboration among all stakeholders.

“We are so much more valuable together than the sum of our parts,” Johnson said.

Panelists concluded that if Madison biotech businesses work together, they could potentially sell Wisconsin as a fertile environment open to more business.

The second part of the lecture series, on February 17, intends to further explore why Wisconsin is the right tech for businesses.