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(Circulation. 2007;115:1504-1507.)
© 2007 American Heart Association, Inc.

Editorial

Entrepreneurship in the Medical Academy

Possibilities and Challenges in Commercialization of Research Discoveries

Joseph Loscalzo, MD, PhD

From the Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Mass.

Correspondence to Dr Joseph Loscalzo, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, 75 Francis St, Boston, MA 02115. E-mail jloscalzo@partners.org

Key Words: Editorials • entrepreneurship • conflict of interest

An extract of the first 250 words of the full text is provided, because this article has no abstract.

An entrepreneur in the broadest economic and social sense is a self-employed individual who has autonomy, controls his affairs, and is willing to take risks. Based on this definition, sociologists such as C. Wright Mills have argued that medicine is the apotheosis of an entrepreneurial profession in the United States.¹ Both ideologically and economically, self-sufficiency remains a hallmark of the medical profession, notwithstanding an ever-increasing reliance on technology and the ever-expanding influence of regulation on medical practice. Charismatic authority, according to Weber,² is another essential attribute of the professional persona: possession of a complex body of knowledge that can directly affect the health and survival of an individual accounts for the physician’s historically unquestioned leadership, especially under conditions of physical and emotional stress. The legitimacy of the profession grants this charismatic authority; yet this authority can be compromised if it is not frequently validated by physician behavior.

Risk-taking self-interest can present a major challenge for charismatic (as well as traditional legal) authority, and requires careful oversight by every profession, but especially by the medical profession. A unique aspect of medicine is that it optimally balances the dynamic between charisma and entrepreneurship.³ In contrast to the clergy, who are much more charismatic than entrepreneurial, and attorneys, who, in the extreme, are more entrepreneurial than charismatic, physicians have historically struck a balance between these two important characteristics that has given us a unique position in society: we, in general, achieve financial independence and stability throughout our professional lives, while at the same . . . [Full Text of this Article]