Johannes Zimmermann and Peter Bradley inspire 30 students in a session of the Chair of Entrepreneurship Tecnun–BIC Gipuzkoa
A group of students learned about innovation and entrepreneurship during a colloquium with Johannes Zimmermann and Peter Bradley on Thursday 16th. The speakers explained the evolution of a business like Definiens up to its integration into the multinational AstraZeneca and shared the main challenges of the sector.
20 | 10 | 2025
Last Thursday, October 16, took place in the Degrees classroom of the School a new session organized by the Chair of Entrepreneurship Tecnun-BIC Gipuzkoawith the goal of promoting entrepreneurship among students and in the Gipuzkoa society.
The Chairs director , Gustavo Pego, introduced and gave the floor to Johannes Zimmermann, scientific director of AstraZeneca's Computational Pathology knowledge Center, and Peter Bradley, manager of strategy and implementation in Computational Pathology at AstraZeneca.
For Pego, this session was "an opportunity to exchange knowledge between academia and business. With this goal in mind, a question and answer format was chosen in Spanish and English, in which professors and students joined the conversation to raise their doubts and concerns.
The colloquium began with an exhibition by Johannes Zimmermann on the process by which the small business Definiens, specialized in biomedical image analysis, became part of the multinational AstraZeneca. During his speech, he highlighted core topic such as the founding of the company, the day-to-day challenges and the relevance of the CEO's vision. As he explained, the main challenge of this transformation was "moving from a chaotic growth to a more organic model , forming our own sales teams and more professional software development Structures ".
The conversation quickly turned to another relevant issue: the functioning of the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sector. In this context, both speakers underlined the constant tension between skill, high public expectations and the need for speed. They pointed out the inherent contradiction between speed and precision which, according to Zimmermann, "has no solution and there is no other way than to learn to live with this conflict".
Bradley also noted that, in order to stand out in this industry, it is important to "patent like crazy" and that, right now, "AstraZeneca is investing as a business policy in filing patents even though this is an expensive and tedious process".
The final reflections of the colloquium addressed issues such as the relevance of good scientific marketing and of having data that, in the midst of the AI revolution, allows better market decisions to be made. In addition, Bradley stressed the importance of the human factor when acquiring a company: "it's not all about numbers or which technology is better; you also have to look at how two different realities fit together and the attitude to work".
