A Study of Postinvestment Monitoring Practices in Life Science Venture Capital Firms

Life science and biomedical technology start ups are a major focus for the establishment of innovation and knowledge-based economies. This article describes themes and practices in the monitoring of private company investments by life science-oriented venture capital firms and the possible relevance to this of project management concepts and techniques. A qualitative approach was adopted, using semistructured interviews with a small number of life science-oriented venture capital firms in the northeastern United States ‘‘biotech’’ corridor. The results are summarized as alternative ‘‘rational-explicit’’ and ‘‘complex behavioral’’ models of monitoring that are described and also compared to process groups found in project management literature.