I don't need convicing that it is easy to inovate outside of big pharma. Altough bioinformatics startups do require quite a bit more cash then pure software sta

I don't need convicing that it is easy to inovate outside of big pharma. Altough bioinformatics startups do require quite a bit more cash then pure software startups. However, the biggest part of capturing value is the regulatory burden. In other words, lets say you have a great way to discover biomarkers. Even more so, you go ahead and DO discover a pile of biomarkers with great potential. Then you attemp to sell those biomarkers to big pharma, and that is when you find out: Even with all their beurocracy and horrible return on R&D investments, big pharma is sitting on a huge pile of biomarkers. Pushing any one tratment through the pipeline costs a metric tonne of cash and takes 10 year before you even know if it's worth to keep going. That is why there's a huge backlog of potential drugs, biomarkers, treatments, etc. Thus merely finding new things with potential is only slighlty better then nothing.