Financial Leadership's Evolving Relationship with Innovation

PE: How do you see the relationship between financial leadership and innovation evolving within rare disease biotech companies?
Smith: You know, finance leaders have to be comfortable green lighting spending. They have to, they have to allow the the operating leadership of the company, and be engaged with that operating leadership in such a way that they provide enthusiastic support for the right spending on the right things. And there can be a myopia that develops that we have a spending target, and we have to stick to it no matter what, and that spending target may be appropriate at a particular point in time, and may change depending upon what what you learn about, either a clinical development opportunity, a science a preclinical development piece of work, a preclinical piece of work, or a commercial opportunity, and being willing to to be flexible at the right time where opportunities permit themselves means you have to be you can't always be like, let's not spend Let's spend less. Let's spend less. You have to be very enthusiastic when there's a good opportunity to provide it the support it needs, because you won't get good returns if you don't invest in good projects.