Michigan suffered one heck of a body blow in January 2007. That’s when Pfizer, the world’s largest drugmaker, said it was shutting down its Ann Arbor, MI, research and development center, and eliminating 2,400 jobs.

That’s usually the end of the story, as hardly anybody keep tracks of what happens to a talented group of people like that as they scatter to the wind. But many of the people who honed their skills inside Pfizer and other big companies have found new entrepreneurial outlets to keep doing what they do best at a growing array of contract research organizations (CROs).

Read more