How AI Is Changing The Way Small Biotechs Grow And Compete - Real Talk With Tyson Kamikawa

What It Takes To Build IT For A Biotech Company! #pharma #aiforbiotech #podcast

Can AI really help build a small biotech company from the ground up? Please visit our website to get more information: https://swangroup.net/ 

In this episode, I sit down with Tyson Kamikawa, VP of IT at Synindex Pharmaceuticals, to talk about how AI is changing the way small biotech companies grow. Tyson shares his journey from IBM to biotech, how IT supports research and operations, and what AI tools are actually making a difference.

It’s a real, practical look at AI’s role in modern biotech. If you enjoy honest conversations about tech and biotech, make sure to like and subscribe for more episodes like this.

Links from this episode:

✅ Get to know more about Tyson Kamikawa: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kamikawa 

✅ Learn more about Syndax: https://syndax.com/

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How AI Is Changing The Way Small Biotechs Grow And Compete - Real Talk With Tyson Kamakawa

Chapters

• 1:23 Tyson’s early career and path to biotech
• 3:31 Launching four drugs (and what’s not normal)
• 6:31 Evolution of tech: from mainframes to the cloud
• 7:20 What AWS outages reveal about cloud consolidation
• 12:09 The hype vs. reality of AI in small companies
• 16:08 The real business value of IT
• 23:03 Why project management is where value gets unlocked
• 30:37 The work in the middle: connecting functions
• 34:47 Data chaos vs. good governance
• 40:13 Will everyone have an AI assistant for their role?
• 43:47 Why you never outsource your brain
• 47:58 Music, the Ukuleles, and finding balance

Transcript

Steve Swan [00:00:00]:
Join me for an insightful conversation with Tyson Kamakawa, VP of IT for Syndex Pharmaceuticals. We had an insightful conversation on AI and building out pharmaceutical organizations as they head towards commercial. Join me. Thank you. Welcome to Biotech Bytes where we chat with IT leaders in biotechnology and their it, you know, what they think's happening in IT and what's happening with our industry. Today we have the pleasure being joined by Tyson Kamakawa, VP of IT at Syndex Pharmaceuticals. Tyson, welcome.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:00:39]:
Hey, Steve, how are you doing?

Steve Swan [00:00:41]:
I'm doing great. Well, I want to remind our listeners real quick before we get going that you know, to follow us, don't forget to follow us. And like, if you, if you enjoy what you hear, like, like us on Apple or Spotify or YouTube. Right. So. Well, Tyson, thank you, thank you, thank you. This is great. I'm excited for this.

Steve Swan [00:01:00]:
So what I always like doing when I start out, Tyson, is just giving our audience a brief intro into you, you know, who you are and kind of where you came from. So can you give us a quick, you know, say one minute on. On Tyson and how you got to where you are today?

Tyson Kamikawa [00:01:15]:
Yeah, yeah. So, man, I. Looking back, I've bridged a lot of worlds. I started out largely my career at. I don't know if anybody remembers that company, but back in the day was a great place to start your career. I spent 10 years as a consultant there. I actually worked with my father for a period of time, which was. Which was great, but really learned solid systems management, IT foundations that I wish many others got that type of experience.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:01:46]:
But started at IBM, giant company, and then gradually worked smaller and smaller to get to biotech. But I went through working at Lincoln Laboratory, Defense Research Organization here in Massachusetts. Fascinating, fascinating people, fascinating company. But defense research. So went from defense research and cybersecurity into biotech and really launched my first commercial product with the first biotech I joined, which later on I found is not normal.

Steve Swan [00:02:18]:
No, no. So you thought that was just part of the, part of the fabric, huh?

Tyson Kamikawa [00:02:22]:
I just figured that every biotech, you. You had a drug candidate, it went through studies and bing, bang, boom, you. You got a drug on the market. That, that seemed to be what was ingrained in my head early. And turns out that's not the case. I don't know if anybody else knows that, but thank you, but no. The CEO of that company, great, great guy, Peter Hecht, talked to every new employee and really said, laid it out for anyone that hadn't been in biotech. Was that hey, every biotech will fail, except when it doesn't.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:03:01]:
And we all ignored that and just marched on anyway. But I've been able to launch, fortunate enough to be able to launch four drugs since then. My current company, we launched our first drug and our second drug within three months of each other. And that was quite a series of events. But great for patients.

Steve Swan [00:03:23]:
Who was the first company? I'm just curious, what was the name?

Tyson Kamikawa [00:03:25]:
Ironwood. We launched Linzess.

Steve Swan [00:03:27]:
There you go. Very cool, very cool. And here you are today. So then what about it? How did you get involved with this racket?

Tyson Kamikawa [00:03:34]:
Yeah, yeah. So my degree was in business from a small company, smaller, small college in Wisconsin. Loved growing up in Wisconsin and worked for a small consulting firm. And then lo and behold it was getting into the Y2K situation and IBM was on a mad hiring spree and I was part of a giant cohort that was kind of ushered through the IBM ranks to in no small part help out with that effort and a lot of other technology changes that were happening at that time. So that was 98, 99. And so really cut my teeth as that IBM consultant and grew in my experience within IBM. And when I left I was the point person for IBM's Crisis Response for the city of New York which was after 9 11. And that was, met some very fascinating people there and had some really formative experiences in the aftermath of that event trying to prevent another situation from happening, being better prepared for it.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:04:49]:
So we take the crisis management security, cyber security very, very, very seriously. It's, it, it impacts people.

Steve Swan [00:04:58]:
It's tough to be ready for something like that, you know, is what it is. I, I read a story just, just talking about 911 real quick. I read a story about the guys at Morgan Stanley that were in the trade centers and there was this one guy internally, it was a guy that actually was at my father's long term care facilities that he's in now. A guy, guy passed recently but he was a managing director of Morgan Stanley and he would drill these people and he would do escapes, you know, out. He saved thousands. Because when it came, when it came, he's like, I got this and these people know what to do. Which you know, that was awesome.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:05:37]:
You hope you never have to use that stuff. But yeah, it's better to be prepared.

Steve Swan [00:05:43]:
Yeah, it's tough to be ready right when those big, you know, like Mike Tyson said, everybody's got a plan so they get punched in the face and.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:05:49]:
And you know, it's, it's, it's Tough when you're in growing businesses like emerging biotechs where you're laser focused on getting that, that product through the studies and through regulatory, into commercial and no one's got time for disaster recovery or contingency planning. So it's really trying to, to race to the front and hopefully you, you hit enough luck that you don't have to worry about that, but.

Steve Swan [00:06:16]:
Absolutely, absolutely. So what have you seen, like from a technology perspective? Right. I mean you've seen a bit, right?

Tyson Kamikawa [00:06:23]:
Quite a few things from mainframe operating to all the way through the Unix to distributed systems, nobody knows what that is anymore and client server and then cloud. I think I hit the industry at a very interesting time where I was able to touch down at a lot of different spaces.

Steve Swan [00:06:42]:
Yeah, yeah, well, so, and, and we kind of touched on this a minute ago before we started recording, I mean, all the way to the cloud where Amazon went down yesterday and it kind of took a lot of folks down. But what, what have you seen, you know, or in our industry, you know, meaning, I mean we've made a lot of strides. Right. We're, we're hopefully not doing too much client service stuff now. Right. And, and, and that kind of thing. But you know, what have you seen? Where do you think we're heading? Tell me a little bit about that, you know, based on your experience.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:07:12]:
Yeah. Yesterday Amazon Web Services suffered a significant outage and it took down a lot of companies, including their own Amazon Prime, Prime Video, Netflix and many, many service providers. Honestly, that got me reflecting to what it means to have this consolidation of really consolidation of power in very few. So whether you're Amazon Web Services or Google or Microsoft, these are, these are giant behemoths that in our livelihood they're too big to fail. And when you have a hiccup like that, it impacts call centers, it could impact systems of care for people in hospital systems. It impacted my daughter's college courses. The college she's at didn't get their student information system up in a reasonable amount of time. These are impactful and really I started thinking back and this is not to do a history lesson, but going back to IBM's breakup in 1969, where it was before that time IBM offered hardware and software bundled together where it was all one package.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:08:32]:
You bought a whole compute and processing environment and that was the giant of that day. But the government stepped in and created an antitrust case that really brought that apart so you could buy software separate from the hardware. And it created a whole lively ecosystem that we take for granted today. And so I think forward, fast forward to the 80s and you have AT&T being the really monopoly of networking that was broken up into all the baby bells which ended up coming back together. But that's another story. So now we've got Amazon, Microsoft, Google and several others that are the new behemoths of our age. And it starts making you wonder like is this a climate where we need to start thinking about antitrust and breaking up some of these large companies that are just, we have too much consolidation and too few platforms that leaves us all vulnerable. And so not to hearken back to those client server days where we had distributed computing, but this is what I'm thinking.

Steve Swan [00:09:45]:
I've heard a lot of people argue that the ofTC and the DOJ might have missed this a little bit. And to your point, when we see instances like this, there's merit to that, right? I mean we again, you know, they, they, they did what they did and they do what they do and they got as big as they, you can't blame them. They're going to keep going.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:10:07]:
There's acceptable fence. Fascinating companies that add a lot of tremendous amount of value. I mean in the 1012 years I've been in biotech, from launching my first product with, with Ironwood to the two that I've recently launched with Syndax one, just tremendous help for patients. But the cost of launching a drug then versus now, it's orders of magnitude less and orders of magnitude more simple to stand up the capabilities. And that's largely due to obviously the cloud enhanced networking capabilities. And I think a third pillar that we shouldn't overlook and that's the flexible workforce that we've got. Our ability, my ability to get the skills that I need onboarded for the period of time that I need them and then, then they can move on to other work that changes the game where I don't have to build. Not only build the systems, build the infrastructure, but build the internal workforce to execute.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:11:17]:
There's a rich partner network out there.

Steve Swan [00:11:20]:
Oh absolutely, yeah, absolutely. And you know, the gig economy, but then there's also global, right? Yeah, a lot of global, you know, so it depends on whether you do need to have a, you know, lay eyes on them and, and that sort of thing. So just depends on what you need and where you need it. So tell me, what do you think so far in our industry, you know, kind of piggybacking off all the large technology stacks that we just kind of touched on. AI Right. So how's AI impacted you, your company, what you've done, and then what are you seeing for it coming up in the future? Everybody's talking about, everybody wants to hear about it, and I'm to hear your thoughts.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:12:01]:
I don't think you can get VC funding unless you've got AI attached to your company somehow. There's a credible argument that's made that our whole financial investment system, the S P, is built on American AI. And if that doesn't go the direction everybody wants, we'll have other things to discuss. Literally a day does not go by that I don't have a discussion about some facet of AI in my calendar. And I think everybody is pretty familiar with the generative AI tools out there that have kind of replaced the search function in people's lives, the chatgpt and the like. But really where it impacts small businesses like us is I think what I call the democratization of technology, where the vendor ecosystem that provides or tries to provide technology and data resources to organizations doesn't come through it. We are not the sole broker of technology and companies that comes to all of the edges. So I have people, recruiters in HR that an interesting HR vendor comes to them and says, oh, I've got this great AI tool that we can help you find more candidates, filter through candidates faster, and provide some kind of business benefit.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:13:38]:
And then they come to, hopefully they come to compliance. And they come to it and say, hey, what do you guys think about this? Does this make sense? So it's those AI vendors knocking on every door in the company that we get deluged with these requests to review MSAs and contracts. And honestly, by the time we get to, is there any value realization from these AI tools? We're already worn down to, to be very jaded on the actual benefits realization of many of these products. I think we're, we're still in the early stages of the value creation curve and we may be on the plains of disillusionment or something. I don't, I don't know.

Steve Swan [00:14:24]:
Yeah, it's, it's grown to pretty large proportions into, you know, dovetail off what you said initially. You know, 40% of the S P is now made up of what, the top eight companies or something? Something like seven. So that's, that's a big number, man. That's a big number. So, you know, and, and you know, I, I was thinking last night, I have a friend of mine that works for Gartner and he's down at the big Gartner symposium going on as we speak and he's running a breakout room today. On the business value of it. We haven't been talking about that much. Right.

Steve Swan [00:14:58]:
I think we're stuck between AI like you've been talking about every, every day. But then also you got the little, little, little ones that aren't worried about AI or the business value, but they talk about sort of, you know, keeping the lights on, the outsourcing. Let's just keep the lights on. So you got, keeping the lights on and then you got AI. But the business value of it is kind of where the rubber meets the road. I think it's easier maybe to measure these two or hopefully measure the AI. One definitely can measure this one. Right.

Steve Swan [00:15:24]:
You know, my reliability and my security and things like that. Right. You know, the AI, we're starting to maybe learn how to measure. We got some bots set up maybe for, I don't know, purchasing contracts, whatever, whatever that might be. But the actual business value of it, I think it got lost in the sauce a little bit recently. Well, recently, maybe the last year.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:15:44]:
Yeah, it doesn't get the attention, but honestly that's where I am. Just laser focused. Because you could be distracted by so, so many things. So you talk about Gardner. There's a analyst. I'm not sure if he's still there. Richard Hunter. Do you, do you know the name?

Steve Swan [00:15:59]:
No.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:16:00]:
He used to be an executive consultant or coach, part of their EXP team. Richard Hunter. He wrote a book called the Real Value of It, the Real Work of It. Bright red cover, can't miss the book. He's also an amazing blues harmonica player, but that whole separate story.

Steve Swan [00:16:22]:
That's right. You're a music guy. I forgot about that.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:16:24]:
Anyway, so, so, so that what is value? It's value contribution. And, and this is not to give away my own personal story on this, but I. The value of it is improving business performance. And if that is your shining star, your guiding light, everything's got to fall in there. And usually technology helps you improve your business performance, but not always. So it's. So it starts to become a story about how you build your organization and construct your business processes to achieve your organization's goals. And it's rather self evident that technology nowadays has to be a significant contributor to that.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:17:10]:
And that's where the business value of it is. That I see.

Steve Swan [00:17:13]:
Yeah, of course, you know, and you know, if we can't, you know, save time, money or both. Right, because they, they're gonna. What are we doing? You know, and, and it seems to me that we're kind of losing that conversation a little bit because, you know, of the whole AI conversation it's taken. We only have so many hours in the day. Right. And we only have so many dollars to spend. So, you know, unfortunately, what I hear, I'm trying, trying to choose my words carefully here. Unfortunately, what I'm hearing from a lot of folks in, in it is that, you know, the execs are coming to them and saying, AI, AI, AI, and you're spending or IT folks, I won't put words in your mouth.

Steve Swan [00:17:56]:
IT folks are spending time almost defending that or talking about that and entertaining it and saying, well, this is what we're thinking, this is where we're going, you know, and it's, it's a lot of wasted time and jawboning on it's part to try and say, okay, we can do this, we definitely can't do that, or, or whatever it is, or it's not really going to achieve this lofty goal. You know, I had one guy I was talking to and he said to me, he said, you know, I always look at the ROI of any technology I'm putting in, and when I look at, when I look at AI, the three sort of big things that he could see, you know, from an ROI perspective is customer service. Right. You know, it's going to help automate that redirect. Number two is marcom, you know, marketing, communications. It'll help, you know, it'll help with all that. And then number three, he said that he felt that it would be best with, you know, helping the, the folks that are actually doing the coding.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:18:49]:
Right.

Steve Swan [00:18:50]:
So make almost that bionic employee. So, yeah, the person that's doing the coding isn't. They know how to code, they're doing code review. They're more of an architect and a business sort of a business. I don't want to call them business analyst, but a business interface so they don't have to sit down and write all the code themselves, which takes all the time, the AI will do that for them, but they got to be able to review it. But in those three areas, he said, if someone comes to me and says, okay, we want to put in AI here in finance and it's going to eliminate one headcount. He's like, that doesn't get me excited. There's no ROI there, you know, saving.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:19:20]:
That mythical man hour that, that, that tries and it. And, and that's difficult to, to. To quantify. Yeah. Another example. So I have a brother who's a welder. No, no, Formal experience in, in, in, in software. He uses AI to write code for his automated CNC machines.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:19:42]:
So the, bringing, the, bringing that kind of, of capabilities to, to really, to the, to the, to the plant floor is kind of fascinating.

Steve Swan [00:19:53]:
That's really cool. That's awesome. I, I see I learn something new every day. That's why I have these conversations, you know. That's awesome. Oh, good for him. But now was he a coder? Could he check the code? Does he know how to review?

Tyson Kamikawa [00:20:04]:
He's got a great experience. He's gonna hate me for this. He's got deep and broad experience in baking and bread making.

Steve Swan [00:20:12]:
Okay, that's okay. Yeah, that's a science. That's very, you know, baking, you know, baking, gardening, musicians and programming. You know, I, I always say, you find me folks like that, I'm gonna find you a good IT person, you know.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:20:26]:
Yeah, you know, there's a lot of those professions require a lot of discipline and, and honestly there's a lot of people that go into them and only the best survive. So.

Steve Swan [00:20:36]:
You're right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have a daughter doing. She, yeah. Anyway, she's big into her statistics and she was also, you know, whatever her choirs and things like that. But yeah, she loves her doing her code and all that stuff. But anyway, so, so in. Are you allowed to talk about any use cases you folks have right now for AI or is that not something you want to chat about?

Tyson Kamikawa [00:21:00]:
You know, so our company right now does molecule development and commercialization. So where I think there are some interesting things happening in the biotech space is on the earlier research side, to be perfectly honest, before you get to the QA and regulatory oversight, that, that kind of puts a little more rigor to the discipline and also expense. So where we are right now is in kind of the tried and true executing studies, working with CROs, having a robust medical data environment and commercial data environment so that we know as much about our patients as possible and we can deliver the best services and capabilities we can to them. And many of those just require the old fashioned data governance and discipline and systems management that I picked up way back in those IBM days. And we've just got to execute rock solid reliable data and system services to the organization as well as provide technology project management. I think that that's another aspect that I think it's forgotten in IT training and development is that kind of going back to Richard Hunter's ideas is that we do two things. We provide technology services and we execute projects. That's all we do.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:22:32]:
So we've got a, A lot of focus goes on that. Those technology services, knowing how to manage and configure and develop in certain environments. But the project management and the program management is what actually unlocks the tangible benefits of those, of those tools. So as much as.

Steve Swan [00:22:53]:
Oh, no, no, go ahead.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:22:55]:
All right, so, so as much as. Let's. I'll pick on Salesforce. Great company. Salesforce really made their bones by avoiding it and selling directly to the business functions. And from my experience, you find out pretty quick that yeah, those functions can stand up and kind of get their feet underneath them with the, just working with the vendor like Salesforce or an integrator on that. But they're not skilled in executing the projects. They're not skilled in actually following through.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:23:27]:
It's, it's just not, they're not trained. It's not part of their job. They're, they're, they're there to be, to, to do the actual function itself. Either. Sales marketing could be on the, on the finance side, could be so many different places in the organization, but it is, is the group that knows how to execute those project projects and deliver the value. So, so I don't ever ignore that, that, that, that, that functional business analyst. That's how change happens in the organization. That's how you build a business.

Steve Swan [00:24:07]:
In my experience, yeah, I call, you know, so what you're talking about there, I call in my business, I call it the work in the middle.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:24:15]:
Right?

Steve Swan [00:24:15]:
So when I talk about the work in the middle, that's exactly what I'm talking about. You know, when you just mentioned that there's an, there's maybe an AI tool for HR to find a candidate, you know, and then at the end, you know, so, so take Salesforce, for example. At the beginning they find, you know, maybe they find that the, the sales person that they're selling to or whoever the exec is, and then over here, they close the deal. Nothing's been done in the middle to know how to configure this. What systems is it going to fit with? And you're talking about the work in the middle right there. And that's, that's, that's what I talk about with my business. When, you know, companies come in, they say, you know, we're using AI for this. And you know, one of the things that they, I think, overestimate about what we do and what AI is going to do for them is it's going to find the candidates, right? And it's going to locate those folks up Front all the work in the middle to understand the candidate, the company location.

Steve Swan [00:25:08]:
I don't know. Hybrid, not hybrid. What personality is going to work for you, what personality is going to work for the company, you know, all that kind of stuff. What do we really need to do in this role? And then the final piece is the job offer, which is the sale to the, to the, to the commercial exec. You know, none of the work in the middle has been done. Now you got to step in as the professional because you know how to make those two ends meet because you know what goes on on each end. And that's, that's the same as my business. Because they overestimate that we all pretty much have access to a lot of the same individuals.

Steve Swan [00:25:37]:
Right. And that's fine. So they overestimate the fact of finding the can. I mean, we all find the same candidates. It's the work in the middle, you know, that gets it done. Right. And, and I think they underestimate again, the work in the middle, like you just said, the project management and how things are laid out in the architecture and all that stuff.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:25:54]:
Yeah, and that's a good way to put it. That's really where it sits. We're the binding mechanism, the glue that knits together these business functions. One of the great things my team is doing right now is actually taking your work, which is your middle of finding candidate, to matching to a company. We take over. Okay, now we've got that candidate. How does that candidate become an employee or a contractor now? Onboarding them into all of the different systems and functions that they need and getting them the tools they need to do their job. Are they a salesperson? Do they need to go through all of the kind of boot camp education and training for the organization? They need benefits, they need hr.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:26:34]:
They need to get into the finance system now. They need all of their training. They need an iPad, they need all of these pieces. How can we make that an awesome employee experience? So that day one, week one, they've got the tools they need and they're just delighted to work here. And that, that there's a lot of there.

Steve Swan [00:26:54]:
I have to raise my hand. You just reminded me of something, you guys. Your company got ranked number one on this. It's called the Candy Survey Stand. You may have heard of it. I'm sure our listeners never have. It's, it's a voluntary survey, Right. And this gentleman, Kevin Grossman, develop the system, the Candy Awards.

Steve Swan [00:27:17]:
And they go, they, they, they work with companies that sign up with them and they Develop really metrics and understand the candidate experience and then the onboarding experience for, for new employees. Cindex number one last year, number one. So congratulations. I mean, thank you, thank you. Because too many times in my business, candidates, um, their experience all the way across the board is awful. And they end up at this company. They're like, huh, that was kind of weird, you know, but your, yours is better than, according to Kevin, better than anybody. And you're part of that.

Steve Swan [00:27:52]:
You're part of that.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:27:53]:
So we, I, I, I take every, that, that work very, very personally because really that's it, it. I, that's where I come back to what is the business value of it?

Steve Swan [00:28:05]:
Right.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:28:05]:
It's the, in the, in the user experience, the employee experience, whether that's the onboarding process or the financial processes that we've got, or the commercial team and their unique sales cycle and patient experience. That's why there's an IT department. And I think that's got to be the focus of the modern IT area. Otherwise, what, what value do we perform? If, if, if all of these, the vendors and service providers can go directly to the business function, why do you need a central IT organization? And I think I got to answer that real quick. And the sound bite is, wait, wait. We exist for a reason. It's because we do. We knit those together.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:28:55]:
We know how to extract value from it. And the other business functions, generally speaking, don't have those skills and background to understand how to unlock the value, especially when it crosses multiple business functions. So let's say you want to engage a vendor and you've got to get a contract together. And then at some point, if that goes well, then you're going to get a purchase order and you're going to try and pay that vendor. You're crossing three or four different business functions there, each of which own a piece of that, that continuum, that, that cross functional business process. But not one of them will want to stand up and say, I own the whole thing or I have a vision of how this is going to get laid out. So that's where it is also that, that enterprise architecture role that helps orchestrate how work gets done.

Steve Swan [00:29:48]:
Enterprise architecture, business architecture. You know, you got to, again, the work in the middle, you got to pull it all together. Yeah. You know, and that, the work in the middle's it's, it's not sexy work and it's not something that anybody can point at for any sort of metrics or numbers. To a certain extent you can, but it's really where it all comes together and it's. Without that, it's not getting done.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:30:10]:
You know, it's, it's the old, the old a team. Love it when a plan comes together and it's satisfying when it all works.

Steve Swan [00:30:17]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, gosh, the 18. Anyway, we're dating ourselves here, man. Sorry. Yeah, right. So now we, we touched on AI a little bit. What about. And you talked about data.

Steve Swan [00:30:29]:
Right? So I mean, you know, everybody I talk to, all leaders in IT and biotech talk about data, data, data, data, data.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:30:37]:
Right.

Steve Swan [00:30:37]:
The gasoline for the AI. And then, you know, when, when, when you're working on your, your sexy AI tools, if you don't have data, it doesn't matter, right? So. And you can't buy it because if you buy it, you still gotta clean it up or make sure it's good. So either way, you're kind of, you're kind of stuck. So tell me a little bit about, you know, your, your data journey and what's gone on there at that company. Or you can talk about another.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:30:58]:
Yeah, yeah. So the, the, you really can't have a statement about AI without a statement about data governance and understanding where that comes from. And, and again, I blame the vendor community that's selling the AI, but you've got to have your own data in order, in order to unlock that. So the hardest part, I think, I think apart from cybersecurity, the hardest part of my job is keeping things simple, keeping reducing the footprint of where we have data in our organization. Just this morning I had a request come in like, hey, we've got this vendor, we need to send them a file. They're just going to put it on box.com and then we'll pick it up from there. And like, Box is not part of our architecture, it's not part of our organization. If we, if we persist in putting data in bits and pieces, and Box is a fine company, there's.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:31:55]:
I would have no problem from a security or operations perspective putting it there. It's just not part of this, this, this environment. It's keeping your data in as few places as possible that is so crucial, keeping your business processes as simple as they can be. And the challenge, when you're growing an organization, you're going from research and development into commercial, you're going through those transition periods, you're bringing a lot of people on board that have a lot of different experiences. And all of them, yeah, all of them want to bring their own tools. And I use this in the past and I used that in the past. So if you are not diligent in designing the workflows, the business architecture, the system, sorry, business data architecture, then systems architecture, you're going to be architecting yourself into a very expensive, time consuming, complicated and error prone environment. So most of what I try and do is simplify as much as possible.

Steve Swan [00:32:58]:
Wise words.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:32:59]:
Yeah, thank you. And it's easier to do on the commercial side, generally speaking because that you're built. When I come into an organization, we're generally launching for the first time, so we're building from scratch. So herding the cats, wrangling the monkeys together is still not easy, but it's far easier than trying to re engineer existing disciplines and processes. Like in a clinical and development organization where you've got studies just being executed wherever it was cheapest, easiest to do at the time. And now you're trying to build into a central organization, maybe you're trying to, trying to build a central clinical data warehouse where before you've got clinical data sitting on vendor sites, on laptops and email, you name it, it's been there. And trying to get that wrangled into a place where you can extract value from it at the organizational level is the next level challenge. And that's something that I'm working with a lot of leaders here to help do because they built this organization with the design for what was prudent at the time.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:34:17]:
And now we're trying to make sure we're operating efficiently, which means cost, which means simplified business processes. And it's a huge, huge change in mind shift and we've got some great leaders that are helping with that. But it can't do it alone. We've got to have functional leadership that is data aware.

Steve Swan [00:34:39]:
Yeah, well I had a, I had a gentleman that I placed, he was responsible for Azure security at about a 3 1/2 billion dollar company local to us, maybe closer to 4 billion. And this was now about a year and a half, two years ago when I was last really talking to him about it, maybe it was about a year ago. He would run around the organization because he wanted to make sure their data was secure. Right. You know, we got, like you said, you got to track it. Every time it goes anywhere anybody touches it, we got to track it. So he would, he went all the way up to the cfo, nobody wanted to say I'm responsible for data. And he's like, somebody's got it.

Steve Swan [00:35:20]:
The buck has to stop with somebody. And then I want to talk to that person about how we're going to secure our data. But nope, like you said, nobody wants to fess up. Nobody wants to say, okay, yeah, I'm your guy. Let's. Let's talk about this. Because nobody wanted to handle it, you know, and he's like, we're one, you know, AI unfortunate incident away from losing, you know, our $2 billion drug for a $3 billion company. Let's.

Steve Swan [00:35:43]:
What are we doing?

Tyson Kamikawa [00:35:44]:
You know, I'll, I'll put a finer point on that, too. I completely agree. The. Everybody believes they do a good job with cybersecurity, and we'll, we'll just start with the idea that everyone out there is doing a great job and you're going to be able to prevent what's happening. The challenge that I think is most acute is that your cybersecurity is not the only game in town. You are relying on every vendor and service provider and partner's cybersecurity capabilities as well. So whether it's a contract manufacturing organization, whether it's Salesforce that just a couple weeks ago had a major, major blow, and it's. If there's going to be a cyber security event in your organization, I hate to say it, but it's likely going to be one of your partners that, that's out there.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:36:38]:
Because none of us, I think, in, in today's day and age can build a company on our own. We're using CROs, we're using all sorts of partners. One of them is going to be a weak link. So, and that's where you need to understand where, where your data is, what they have access to, what you have in your house. And, and all of those wandering the halls trying to find who owns the data is, Is going to get a really interesting.

Steve Swan [00:37:08]:
Yeah. And that's what this guy was doing. He was literally doing that, and he's like, nobody, nobody's talking to me.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:37:14]:
It's too easy to, to, to, to, to hire a service provider or bring an application in. That, that. And people don't look at the whole picture of what that means from the data perspective. And that's, that's really where the val. If there's any value in the organization, it's. It's your data and your cash.

Steve Swan [00:37:36]:
Yeah, right.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:37:38]:
That's it.

Steve Swan [00:37:39]:
That's it. Yeah. You know, I mean, it's crazy. I had one company come to me. I'd say it was six or seven months ago. Can you help us with AI Security? I said, AI Security. I said, are we talking about data like, like TLP or. No.

Steve Swan [00:37:57]:
AI Security? I Said, I don't really know what that. I'm thinking it's more about the data, but we never. They never got back to it because you have a description. Can I talk to who's this is? It was coming from one of their heads of recruitment in hr. Somebody said that to them and. And, you know, I'd even.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:38:13]:
Somebody read an article.

Steve Swan [00:38:14]:
They did. They must have, because I went to one of their heads of IT Security who I put in there, and I asked him about it. He goes, nobody's brought this up to me. I said, you know, so he never heard about it. So I guess it went away. I don't really know, but.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:38:28]:
Oh, it went. I'm sure it went somewhere, but never came to me.

Steve Swan [00:38:33]:
Yeah, but it's. I mean, I mean, I think I'm thinking about it, right? I was like, you guys are probably looking for more data security. It's about your data, your AI. It's not the tool itself anyway.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:38:43]:
I mean, and that could be a conflation between data security and compliance and privacy.

Steve Swan [00:38:52]:
I don't know. It was, you know, almost as good as when someone came to me once and said, I need a head of AI. Why? Oh, because we don't want to be left behind. I'm like, okay, the FOMO hire, I'm out. You know, I'm not doing that.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:39:04]:
So anyway, yeah, yeah, AI will have several landing places in organizations like ours, but I think it's too early yet to say how that's going to solidify.

Steve Swan [00:39:17]:
I agree, I agree. I see a lot of folks saying the same thing. You know, where they're looking at it and they're seeing it, they're saying, okay, listen, it's here. It's not going away, it's here to stay. Let's keep building it into, you know, our architecture and our everything we do, let's keep beating it up, but let's not make it our centerpiece. Because if we try and make ourselves an AI organization, God only knows what that's really going to mean. But it's going to be smart. It's going to help us all.

Steve Swan [00:39:40]:
One, One gentleman who I did a podcast with, I think it was last week, he kept talking and I. I mentioned it earlier, the rise of the bionic employee.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:39:47]:
Right.

Steve Swan [00:39:47]:
You know, just how it's going to help everybody be better at what they do. It's not going to replace, but it's going to help everybody focus on the. The top, you know, 50, 70 of the stuff they do. And it's going to have to Drop off the bottom 20 or 30 to let AI handle it, you know, so it'll make everybody that much more efficient and, you know, earning what they make. Right.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:40:05]:
One of the hypotheses I think is interesting is the possibility that many people in an organization will have a paired agent and a genic AI that's, that's tuned to their business role. Head of, head of regulatory will have a head of regulatory AI. Head of IT will have a head of IT AI that will help be that companion and. But yet there's still a person accountable for decisions and strategy that's made. But perhaps we'll all have that little angel on our shoulder that's whispering in our ear.

Steve Swan [00:40:41]:
I bet, I bet that's coming here. But it'll be more of a fixture, I guess I should say. Right.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:40:50]:
It's just not quite perfected yet. But no, we got a week that's.

Steve Swan [00:40:56]:
Got a ways to go. You know, we're getting there though.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:40:58]:
Yeah. No, I, I think one interesting thing, and this is I think natural, is that it's obvious the, the younger generation is more comfortable with using the newer tools, the AI tools. However, to really unlock the value of those AI tools, you need the more senior experience and, and, and, and, and, and some of the age and depth to, to really unlock that. But, but those people, probably a little bit like myself, aren't as, as skilled in, in, in using those. So it's a, it'll be an interesting chasm to cross.

Steve Swan [00:41:36]:
It will.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:41:37]:
Yeah.

Steve Swan [00:41:37]:
And that's why I keep. My daughter graduated, I keep saying that to my daughter. She graduated from Pitt with the computer science grant. I mentioned her to you once.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:41:45]:
Yeah.

Steve Swan [00:41:45]:
And she's, she started with a company and she's building out some integrations and things. And she's always told me she's, I don't want to be a coder. I don't want to be a coder. So she didn't focus on being a super coder.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:41:56]:
Right.

Steve Swan [00:41:57]:
Well, in her new job, she's doing exactly what I said earlier. She's, she's, she's having AI code for it, but she can review it and she can architect it and she knows what the business wants because she always said, I want to interact with people. I said, well, listen, if you're only doing coding, you're going to get outsourced anyway. Right. So she's getting embedded with the business, understanding what they need and then writing different integrations for them and stuff using her, her AI tools, you know. So, yeah, I think it's it's got to go that way. She's not senior enough, like you just said, to really know what's going on with the business. But the older they get, the more familiar they get, you know, and as long as they're able to interact and understand, which, you know, fingers crossed, I think, where there's still hope for the generation.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:42:39]:
You know, I, I try and say it. No, I don't try. I actually do say this is that in an organization, we never want to outsource our brain. So I will outsource a help desk, manage services for various areas. But architecture, design, the accountability, you can outsource that. The people that know how it's built and are accountable for it need to be part of your organization. And whether that's outsourcing to an MSP or outsourcing to an AI once you lose the understanding of how something is constructed and why there, I don't know how you recover from that.

Steve Swan [00:43:20]:
You can't outsource the work in the middle. What we were just talking about. You can't. It's more of an art than a science, you know, you can't put ones and zeros on it. It's, it's. You know how to ride the bike, right? You've done it so many times. It's. Anyway, that's, that's my piece of wisdom for the day.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:43:39]:
All right.

Steve Swan [00:43:41]:
Anything else before I have one final question. I think you might even know what it is.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:43:45]:
I think I might know your final question. Let me.

Steve Swan [00:43:47]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think you do. But anything else you want to hit from an IT perspective, biotech perspective, before we get to my final.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:43:56]:
We've covered a lot. Biotech is a fascinating place to be. I've been laid off a bunch of times. I've had some, some many learning moments and some great successes. And there's nothing like it when you can touch patient, patients lives and their families and the community. It's just at IBM I worked at, you name an industry, I've worked there. I can't go back to banking, insurance. It's just the, the, the outcomes are just not the same here.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:44:30]:
And so biotech's a great place to work. It's frustrating, it's annoying. There's fraught with failures and it's, and it's crazy and insane, but I wouldn't trade it.

Steve Swan [00:44:41]:
That's good. Good. It's worse than, it's worse than being a hater in baseball. Right. You know, 30% would be great. Right.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:44:49]:
We love that the investment community would Love that.

Steve Swan [00:44:53]:
Imagine that. Right. Well, I guess there was only a couple guys that hit 300 this year, but yeah. Anyway, so. All right, so my final question, which you already know, you know, it's for those that I gotta ask it anyway, so, you know, I'm a music guy. I like music. I like going to see live performances and things like that. So I like asking my folks, as the last question, what's been your favorite live music that you've ever seen that you've ever gone to see? Yeah, you were, you were, you were an opera singer, right?

Tyson Kamikawa [00:45:22]:
I was. I was 67 years. I sang with the Florentine Opera in Milwaukee. Great organization. And had a couple little solos here and there and sang with some great people, but like gave that all up for it.

Steve Swan [00:45:38]:
Well, of course, of course. Why wouldn't you?

Tyson Kamikawa [00:45:41]:
Yeah, but. No, and, but in recent years, the last couple years actually post Covid, I've gotten into the local band scene and I'll say the best, best show that I've seen recently is we just performed at the Burren on, on Sunday night and had a blast. And so plugging my own band, if you, if you love live music. The Ukuleles is, is my current band.

Steve Swan [00:46:11]:
Okay.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:46:11]:
Pop and rock with Andrew's Sisters harmonies. We got some great singers, and I've just dated myself again with the Andrew Sisters reference, but we have an awesome time. Ukuleles, Boston.

Steve Swan [00:46:26]:
And you, you sing for them. Do you play guitar? Do you play bass drum? What else?

Tyson Kamikawa [00:46:30]:
Oh, so I don't think you can see. Let me see if I can do this. See? Saxophone there, saxophone there. So saxophones is really where I'm gone to.

Steve Swan [00:46:41]:
Okay, so you don't sing anymore. You don't even sing back up with them or lead or anything?

Tyson Kamikawa [00:46:46]:
I, I'm not ruling it out. It's. It's. It's just that I got very deep into, into playing again. I played a little bit in high school and college, and then when my kids got old enough where they didn't want me around so much anymore, I found my found music again, got back into playing and then really, when I realized during COVID that I would be spending a lot of time in this space right here for a very long time, I got a. A great local saxophone teacher who's now a great friend of mine and worked with him and I practiced every day for three years.

Steve Swan [00:47:25]:
Wow.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:47:26]:
And built it up. And, and so, yeah, could I sing? I probably could, but I love, love, love, love playing.

Steve Swan [00:47:34]:
And you'll leave that in the shower in the car or something you'd rather play?

Tyson Kamikawa [00:47:37]:
I'll bust it out here and there, but. But we've got some great singers. And then when it's my time, they just look over at me. Okay, now I. I get out. Do your thing now. Shut up, then. Do your thing now.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:47:50]:
Shut up.

Steve Swan [00:47:50]:
Okay. Yeah, that's cool. I wish I played an instrument, but I just go and see a lot of live music.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:47:54]:
Not too late, man.

Steve Swan [00:47:55]:
I know. That's what they say. That's what they say. My brother's wife, who's in several bands, I go and see her in New York City down to Bitter End. I see her.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:48:04]:
Oh, yeah, Yeah.

Steve Swan [00:48:05]:
I was just there this. This past Friday. But she. She didn't play guitar. She never played guitar until after she graduated college, and so she plays guitar, sings lead for them and stuff like that. So, yeah, it's all good. It's all good stuff. Well, listen, I appreciate your time.

Steve Swan [00:48:20]:
Thank you very much. Maybe someday we'll do a repeat on this, you know.

Tyson Kamikawa [00:48:24]:
Love to. There's always more to talk about.

Steve Swan [00:48:27]:
Always more to talk about. Always more to talk about. So, you know, if anybody ever wants to reach out to Tyson, feel free to do so. Let him know you saw our podcast. So, Tyson, I thank you very much.