Contrary to popular opinion, the hardest part of starting a biotechnology company is not doing world-leading research, or finding millions of pounds, or even recruiting a finance officer that the scientists do not want to kill.

It is thinking up a name.

Merlin has found that there is a simple solution, and, because it would save us enormous effort if you would use this before you ask us for the millions of pounds, we are making it freely available to all. A beta test run-time version that runs under DOS (or Windows) is available by clicking here . It looks nothing like the much prettier demo below: a Visual Basic / Windows version may be available soon - e-mail us if you want to be told when it is available.

It is essential to realise that most biotech names are a result of recombinant technology - recombining a set of standard modules from a variety of sources. This is quite automatic.

Consider a company producing genetically engineered vaccines against Rindepest in cattle, whose CEO lives in the highlands of Scotland. We start by considering what technologies are involved

and select the appropriate word fragment, in this case reflecting immunology. Then we ask what species are involved - cattle for us, but more generally agricultural species and microbes.

Now we ask what industry we are in - clearly, agricultural, but possible we can put an environmental spin on it as well.

For many biotech companies there is a medical speciality to consider as well. This does not apply to us, but the name components are very varied if you can tie in a medical speciality.

Then there are a lot of phrases from business-speak and management consultancy, which are meaningless but impressive. You can choose any of these to bind into your name, providing that they do not say something rude in your native language.

Then we add some generic 'scientific' terms in which are appropriate for the technology we are going to use.

Lastly, there may be some specific terms or phrases we want to add. Here the CEO wants the company to be based in Aviemore so he can visit his ageing aunt and go rock climbing, so we type this into the brew

The result would be names like Avimmunagrosecosyntech, which is a bit much, so we compress the components down so the syllables overlap, and presto, instant Biotech Name

You can add components to this as you wish, such as Greek mythological figures or football teams, but the basic process is the same. Now all you have to do is design the logo ...

(c) Merlin Ventures / William Bains 1997