CHAPTER 21

More Business Adventures of How It Works in Real Life

You just have to trust your own madness.

Clive Barker

Life teaches us “stuff.” First-hand business experiences, adventures, and misadventures have always had a profound impact on me. These are worth sharing. There’s a lesson to be learned from each one.

Flexible Ethics Has Its Limits

A large pharmaceutical company produced a laboratory reagent that sold for $10. It was packaged in a little nondescript brown bottle. Quite by accident, it was discovered that the reagent slightly diminished the resting tremor associated with Parkinson’s disease. Overnight, the same product, same sized little bottle (with a new label, though) started selling for $995. Also, overnight, I abandoned the ...

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