Everyone knows the tale of Brand X getting bought out by some faceless global conglomerate and going to shit, but does the opposite ever happen?

  • frosty99c@midwest.socialEnglish
    16·
    9 months ago

    Maybe medical? Like, Bio-Ntech designed the COVID vaccine, Pfizer bought it and could wrap up the phase 3 trials and then scale production?

    So, they didn’t actually make the product better, but they probably made it viable sooner than if they hadn’t bought it?

    But that is kind of the normal process for the medical industry at this point…start ups developing new medicine and then shopping it to Big Pharma for buyouts or funding

      • frosty99c@midwest.socialEnglish
        2·
        9 months ago

        Oh interesting! I didn’t realize that. I work tangentially with pharma start ups and development and just assumed they were bought out. I’ve seen that happen enough times that it felt expected. Thanks for the clarification!

    • EchoCranium@lemmy.zipEnglish
      1·
      9 months ago

      I don’t think Phizer did anything to make the vaccine better, just more available. Their size makes it possible to do things at larger scale. Phizer has pretty much given up on doing any R&D and now just buys up smaller innovative companies. They extract out any patents and other IP they want, and move on. I work in pharma, and everyone I know who’s worked for them in the past has a story about how Pfizer came in, bought their facility, then shut the doors within a couple years. Definitely didn’t make the lives of all those workers better, who had to uproot their families and find new jobs elsewhere.