Regulations and ISO standards are crucial for life science start-ups but focusing too much on them can stifle growth. Compliance is reactive and limits progress, while quality is proactive and drives continuous improvement. Use compliance as a foundation, but let quality be the framework that propels your business forward. Read more of our thoughts on Robert Fenton post.
Regulations and ISO standards are a useful target for life science start-ups in their earliest days. But past a certain point, focusing on them too closely hinders rather than helps your business. It encourages line-by-line maintenance of the status quo, fixated on compliance rather than quality. Compliance is reactive, one-size-fits-all, and binary. Quality is proactive, unique to your business set-up, and a spectrum to move through. Compliance holds your business back to its bare minimum, stopping anything other than the foundations being built. Quality gives you the framework for continuous improvement and best practice to be pushed. It’s no surprise that the FDA found excessive focus on compliance to be a leading cause of drug shortages in the US. Make compliance your springboard, not your end goal.