-Academic labs are chronically underfunded and constantly fighting for grants. Most labs don't buy equipment unless they absolutely have to.
-Most academics are Luddites. That excel spreadsheet 8000 pages long works just fine, why would we want to change it?
-The revolving door of staff/students in most labs makes it difficult to institute changes, because as soon as you get something up and running a new batch of people com in to break it or ignore it
Regarding big pharma, they refuse to use any software that wasn't developed and deployed in house on the basis of security issues. They also don't care to purchase anything that can be purchased from India for a tenth of the cost.
Big pharma does not care about their scientists. My friend was not allowed to purchase pens and he was a senior scientist. They had their lights turned off during the day by management to save money.
2) Laboratories are for research, testing and engineering; developmental departments and independent research teams in different areas.
what does Company want - promote products and find customers;
what does Laboratory want - find need product(equipment), get information about product and (for example)promote paid services;
what does People want - interesting information, useful application;
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And need will create complex solution with:
0) base of company,laboratory;
1) information (forum, publications, news);
2) a search engine by products (catalogues);
3) environment for all employees (personal cabinet, chat, management, applications);
things to think about: 1. niche: different industries have radically different requirements so pick a good one (ex: Pharma vs Geophysicists) 2. security: can't really show off things that may be under NDA or propreitary (that's where the money is) 3. MVP: barebones FB for scientists?