Hope all is going well. I wanted to let you know that next Friday November 4th we will begin a new monthly segment we like to call “Monthly Spin Off.” It will give different members of our team (including myself sometimes) the ability to provide some insights into different areas that we deal with at BioSurfaces, from their jobs to the areas related to what we do. It’s another way to provide you with some additional insight into our great team and company.
Hard to believe we are really rounding the bend toward the end of the year and into the winter season soon. Today’s title of the blog comes from our town’s high school slogan. Ashland is the home of the electric clock and the school mascot is a clock (strikes fear into your hearts, doesn’t it?). This is the slogan the sports teams use, which I think is really catchy. It is sort of weird because while I feel like time flies by so quickly, there are parts of my life that are not moving fast enough. It is an odd place to be in. I guess what this means is that things that should be going faster are dragging too much and areas that I want to enjoy a little more just quickly go by. I am mostly a middle of the road type of person, not too high and not too low. That being said, I can also be somewhat inpatient when I want to get something done which doesn’t help my cause. Hopefully, things will come into balance in the near future.
We have been chatting with a lot of different companies and groups over the past several months as we look to grow the company and expand our technology, for devices internally developed to those that we’ve co-developed with partners. It has taken me away from the little time I get to work in the lab. Even a bad day in the lab is still a good day (I probably am not thinking or feeling that way when an experiment goes south but I really do feel that way). Setting up and performing a research study is one of my favorite things to do. It is why I got into this field in the first place. That being said, I fully understand that I need to be front and center talking about all of the great things our technology is capable of doing. I love what we’ve developed and I need to make sure that this comes through. I sort of equate this to a child that likes to eat dessert first before ever eating the meal. Eventually, you learn that you need to eat your meal first before you have dessert, with the point being that you need to do or tackle things that maybe not as fun but are just as important.
I have heard from some folks I must be an extrovert because I don’t seem to mind presenting. In reality, I was an introvert through college that became more outgoing due to marrying an Italian who, as I say, could talk to the dead. I have really come to enjoy talking about the company and the journey we have taken to get here. It has not always been easy, but anything worth achieving doesn’t usually come easy. Otherwise, everyone would be doing it. Most of the companies we are speaking with work in very different spaces from each other. I am always amazed (even though I shouldn’t be) at how our Bio-Spun™ technology has such broad applications when I am presenting our technology deck. Unlike many companies that start with investor funding that narrows the scope of the technology development, we were fortunate to be funded by small business grants and contracts from the government which really allowed us the latitude to really develop our current platform. This development process took some time which delayed us in beginning the real process of getting this out to various groups like customers and patients. We are asked sometimes what took us so long and I always like to remind people that all of the potential applications that they are reviewing was due to taking this time. They are the beneficiaries of this delay. But like the message from Heinz catsup, the anticipation is worth the wait.
There is no better feeling than after I present, when the person or group I am presenting to are blown away about what our team has developed. Even better is when they start listing off different applications that they could see would involve our technology. There are even times when they provide scenarios where our technology could have an application that we had not thought of yet. Many times, though, there is a good chance that we have either looked into the proposed area or even have some initial data. As I’ve mentioned in previous blogs, we have so much data that we’ve generated in our over 19 years in business that we can “forget” what we’ve actually done. This is where time can be an enemy since it goes by so fast and you wish you had more of it to move all of these areas forward. I am not saying that everything we attempt always works. On the contrary, there are times that our technology is not needed for certain applications or what we attempted to develop just did not pan out. That is why it is called research.
However, advancing technology is not just on the research side. Our engineering team continues to advance new technologies that marry with their research counterpart. For example, if we are producing a specific prototype device, we will also produce a manufacturing electrospinning unit or tools that will help make the product more consistent and faster. Our teams need to work well together such that there is no lag. Our business team works on both ends of the process, from securing new business and applications to looking to acquire customers for specific products once the research and engineering teams are finished on their end. Always wish there was more time as well as hands in the day but we are grateful for our team and how they make the most of the time we have.
Don’t forget to check out our new monthly segment debuting on November 4th. Our next #FactualFriday will return on November 10th (due to observance of Veteran’s Day on November 11th. The blog will then return on November 18th. Lots of moving parts but would we have it any other way? I don’t think so.
Matt
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