"Tornado Acquired By Bruker To Expand Its Biopharma Process Analytical Technology Product Portfolio"
As part of Tornado's Genesis, I’m VERY happy to share this acquisition!
I LOVED being with this TEAM.
The founding members were a group of innovative, collegial Canadians sprinkled with a dose of American ingenuity, drive, and determination to hopefully create, if not a unicorn, at least a purple cow.
My tagline back in the day was “enlightened spectroscopy”, and we fought tooth and nail to enlighten the industry naysayers - mostly behemoths - about the unique benefits of getting an order of magnitude more photons to the detector.
Yes, we ultimately accepted that the applications for this innovation were niche.
Nonetheless, HTVS opened a completely new way of seeing things…particularly “in process”...aka PAT.
Here’s what I wrote about Tornado as a potential "disrupter" during my stint with them:
In 2011 I went to work for a startup in Canada that intrigued me with the description of themselves as having “game changing hardware”. BTW, that’s code for disruptive innovation. This company has a patented innovation for optical spectrographs – i.e. spectrograph with anamorphic beam expansion for higher spectral resolution and throughput. Frankly, it is a perfect example of how iconoclasts just think differently than you and I. Spectroscopes have been around for a long time (the first spectroscope was developed in 1814) so you would think that there could be nothing new under the sun as it pertains to these instruments.
Nay, nay!
This Canada based company was founded by, and employs a number of people, that I would call iconoclasts. The innovation that this start up created effectively eliminates the need to have a slit in a spectrometer; a fundamental element since day one. Many have tried to eliminate this fundamental physical element to improve throughput without sacrificing spectral resolution. They have trumpeted their claims with great fanfare. All of these previous attempts have been derided by the non-iconoclasts amongst us. Frankly, for good reason. They haven’t lived up to the hype. This time may be different. The innovation at this Canadian start up could score one for the iconoclasts.
It remains to be seen if this innovation will be truly disruptive or, more importantly, if the company will be a commercial success. Odds are it won’t be as even start ups supposedly having "game changing hardware" are overwhelmingly destined to fail (~90%) for any number of reasons; mostly finance and marketing related. To understand why is a a deeper discussion you can have with me when you hire me. I'm passionate about putting you in the Top 10%. That said, I’m still in awe of the iconoclastic inventors of this technology (astronomers, BTW) who refused to stop seeing things differently despite being told countless times that they needed to… take their heads out of the sky.
Yes, I cleaned that up.
#innovation #ramanspectroscopy #startupsuccess
