This article does a good job showing how big an impact the concept of "time value of money" can have on a multi-year investment of any kind - pharmaceutical or not. (Particularly since many of us in software are effectively investing nontrivial amounts of our salary in illiquid investments.)
I'd imagine that many tend to think of a $X investment as a $X investment... but if that investor could get effectively compounded interest/returns, even at a single-digit rate, in another investment, they could be risking many times $X by forgoing that investment to take the one in question. Take a look at the chart and formulas in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_value_of_money and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discounted_cash_flow . Important stuff to know regardless of how large a financial decision one wants to make.
And in the context of highly risky drug development, in a capitalist society it's a miracle that niche drugs are researched at all. It speaks to the passion of scientists like the author who endeavor constantly to develop tooling and processes to accelerate/de-risk drug research enough to be an attractive investment in today's increasingly optimized society.
I'd imagine that many tend to think of a $X investment as a $X investment... but if that investor could get effectively compounded interest/returns, even at a single-digit rate, in another investment, they could be risking many times $X by forgoing that investment to take the one in question. Take a look at the chart and formulas in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_value_of_money and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discounted_cash_flow . Important stuff to know regardless of how large a financial decision one wants to make.
And in the context of highly risky drug development, in a capitalist society it's a miracle that niche drugs are researched at all. It speaks to the passion of scientists like the author who endeavor constantly to develop tooling and processes to accelerate/de-risk drug research enough to be an attractive investment in today's increasingly optimized society.