Consultant wins ACT Business Woman of the Year award

Biotech consultant Dr Lyndal Thorburn has been named the 2004 Telstra Business Woman of the Year for the ACT.

Thorburn won the award for her role as managing director of Advance Consulting and Evaluation, which merged with Sydney's Aoris Nova in July to form Innovation Dynamics.

She said that in the 10 years she had been consulting to the biotech industry, companies had become much smarter about intellectual property and about international networks. But fragmentation and the small size of many companies continued to hold the industry back, she warned.

"In 1994, when I was hunting out biotech companies I think I found 60, and they were still very research-based," she said. "[We need to] get over this problem of having companies that are one-tenth the size of their US equivalents -- it's a problem I remember identifying in 1998, and we're still there six years later.

"One of the things I've thought we should be focusing on are the companies that are making profits. Only 10 per cent or less of all biotechs are getting venture capital. The companies making money are in diagnostics, they're in agbiotech, but not drug development."

Thorburn will represent the ACT at the National Telstra Business Women's Awards, to be held in Melbourne on October 23. Winners will share in a national prize pool of more than AUD$200,000.