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Philantropy plays an increasingly important role in promoting innovation in healthcare. Every year larger quantities of money are invested in philantropic projects around healthcare, usually in projets needing large amounts of cash.
These philantropic contributions generate as a byproduct numerous innovations and smaller projects, that finally end up generating spin-offs and new start-ups. Venture capital invests in some of them and they eventually become large companies operating in the healthcare space.
So, the value chain is clear, but there's still one extra step that could "close" the circle... can philantropy become an investor in VC funds?
I've always said that social entrepreneurship should not generate causes, but real businesses, because that's precisely the way to help society, by generating value and growing while having a "doing good" mindset deeply engrained into the start-up values.
We will see more going on in this space.
2 comments:
why is philantropy a normal thing is the US and so rare in Europe?
I have extensive experience in research which I have acquired from the best places of the world (Cambridge University; Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in NY). I am an expert in the most revolutionary science of these days: generation of human induced pluripotent stem cells from patient somatic cells and high-throughput screening for drug discovery, and still cannot make a niche (find funding) here in Europe (Barcelona). I think that my ideas and ambition to create a healthcare spin-off would be of great interest to philantropic individuals but it is just not happening because of the economical crisis maybe. How will I find a funding source for such a business from which local diseased people will benefit so much, if philantropy does not expand in Spain or Europe? My ideas are too applied for governmental funds but it is happening in the States...why not here?
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