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Collaboration to Innovate

Collaboration Matters - Creating Value At the Interface 

*Changes in the life sciences industry and the increasing importance of collaborative partnerships for successful innovation

In today’s life sciences market, companies developing new drugs and treatments increasingly face challenges in all aspects of their day-to-day business. Large, traditional pharmaceutical companies are faced on a daily basis with financial pressures, pipeline pressures, organizational, marketing, and regulatory issues of ever-increasing intensity.

Small or Medium size biotechnology, medical device and pharmaceutical Enterprises (SMEs), by contrast, must seek opportunities for funding, to continue their company’s discovery and development efforts. In addition, SMEs often need to share platform technology through licensing and use an established company’s sales and marketing expertise and geographical coverage to structure a mutual beneficial commercial agreement.

Increasingly, to boost innovation many traditional pharmaceutical and medical device companies have to get out of the “in-house” comfort zone and step into the marketplace to find collaborative in-licensing and development partners, combining crucial capabilities and multidisciplinary professionals to fuel research and development in order to supplement an ailing pipeline and declining cash-flow[1][2].

A parallel can be drawn to the steel industry (1970s), the retail industry (1980s) and the personal computer makers (1990s)[3]. Each of these industries had to face a significant transition in its way of doing business, when the old model of diminishing returns had to be replaced by a structural new model. The same is now happening in the life sciences industry. Extremely significant changes will have to be made in the way research & development is carried out in the life sciences industry for innovation to regain momentum[4]. Some such changes are already underway in the industry, and they will accelerate significantly over the next five years (2010-2015). 

Some  analysts believe the industry would benefit from pre- competitive integrative bio network disease model building[5]. Others believe the industry should “open up” by competitive collaboration[6] and perhaps move into open innovation models[7]. Still others believe successful future innovation will rely on increasing collaboration between the industry and academic research centers[8], focus on molecular diagnostics, or even increase the focus on therapeutic advances, including the use of revolutionary delivery techniques, medical devices and advancing clinical trial designs[9]. 

Most likely, the future of innovation in the life sciences will entail some combination of all of these. However, based upon historic performance, we know that to be considered a top innovator, companies have to create innovation[10] through new products, collaborations, partnerships, and acquisitions, while joining forces has often been critical to many of your sustainable successes.

In other words, there is a rapidly increasing need to collaborate in your life sciences industry, no matter what you and other individual companies choose as their particular strategy moving forward. 

Whether large, established biotechnology, pharmaceutical, or medical device companies choose to expand outsourcing your development through collaboration with Contract Research Organizations (CROs), engage in research collaboration with academic institutions, or enter into collaborative agreements with life sciences SMEs - collaboration in the life sciences industry can take many different forms, and mutually beneficial collaborative partnerships are set to increase in importance for successful innovation in the years ahead. 

Collaboration and partnership generation bring about changes in the ‘modus operandi’ of any organization and require the creation of a truly new organization. There is currently a 70% failure rate[11][12][13] in altering the way an organization is operating and  there exists a strong need for a different approach in forming partnerships and collaborative ventures in the life sciences industry.

                          

Currently, in the formation of your in-licensing and collaboration agreements, legal, financial and technical due diligence often eclipse operational, organizational and culture reviews. When these issues ‘fall through the cracks’, it can lead to big problems for you in your collaborative partnerships further down the line, including:

• Rising confusion about the collaboration’s objective

• Low sensitivity to, or absence of recognition, understanding and value of cultural diversity 

• Missing agility and resilience resulting in cost overruns, due to missing of milestones and, or increased necessity for oversight and technology usage (read: investment)

• Excessive FTE usage based on lack of clarity on what, when and how contributions are required and who is responsible for monitoring what

• Lack of shared internal and external vision

• Lack of bi-directional communication pathway definition

• Lack of neutral perspective on proposed collaboration and parties’ performance evaluation

• Sub-optimal selection of people involved in the collaborative process - often resulting in unhelpful extra-curricular involvement

• Deterioration of the crucial peer-leadership collaboration between partners due to mounting frustration and communication issues

• Sub-optimal return on investment - slower and lower levels of innovation - lagging of results, as the structure and management of the partnership lacked the right definition and shared vision from the start

• Potentially and ultimately disillusionment about what had initially seemed to be a good partnership

• Opportunity and return on investment loss due to a lack of structural and sustainable building blocks for longer term and repeat collaboration

• Potential litigation on contractual terms and lack of deliverables

                                   

CPLS Consulting, with a wealth of expertise in the life sciences industry, maximizes your collaborative partnership from the start in order to prevent this from happening. We guide you through the process and bring a highly diversified, international life sciences and business expertise to the table. 

We look out for your best interests in the formation of collaborative partnership agreements from an operational and organizational angle. Through the use of the unique Collaborative Primacy™ approach, CPLS Consulting makes sure the things that are often overlooked in the formation of collaborative partnership are well-covered so that your proposed collaboration can function optimally, starting at day-1. 

References

[1] Hernández-Cuevas C. (2007). Collaborative Innovation: The Future of BioPharma. Journal of Technology Management & Innovation, Volume 2, Issue 3, 1-3.

[2] Mittra, J., Williams R. (2007). Evolution of the Life Sciences Industries. Technology Analysis & Strategic Management, Vol. 19, No. 3, 251-255.

[3] Gilbert J., Henske P., Singh A., (2003). Rebuilding Big Pharma’s Business Model. In Vivo, the Business & Medicine Report, Vol. 21, No. 10, 1-10.

[4] Munos B., (2009). Lessons from 60 Years of Pharmaceutical Innovation. Nature Reviews | Drug Discovery, Volume 8, 959-968.

[5] Friend, SH (2010). The Need for Pre competitive Integrative Bio network Disease Model Building. Nature, Volume 87, Number 5, 536-539.

[6] Bingham, A., Ekins, S., (2009). Competitive collaboration in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry. Drug Discovery Today, Volume 14, Numbers 23/24, 1079-1081.

[7] Munos, B., (2010). Can Open-Source Drug R&D Re power Pharmaceutical Innovation?. Nature, Vol. 87, Number 5, 534-536.

[8] Vallance, P., Williams, P., Dollery C., (2010). The Future is Much Closer Collaboration Between the Pharmaceutical Industry and Academic Medical Centers. Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics, Volume 87, Number 5, 525-527.

[9] Orloff J., et al. (2009). The future of drug development: advancing clinical trial design. Nature Reviews | Drug Discovery, Volume 8, 949-957.

[10] Root-Bernstein, R., (2007). Innovation (Fighting against the Current). Comprehensive Medicinal Chemistry II, Chapter 2.10.

[11] Beer, M., Nohria, N., (2000). Cracking the Code of Change. Harvard Business Review, HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Change, 88-95.

[12] Beer, M., Eisenstat, R. A., & Spector, B. (1990a). Why change programs don’t produce change. Harvard Business Review, 68(6), 158-166.

[13] Kotter, J. P. (1995). Leading change: why transformation efforts fail. Harvard Business Review, 73(2), 59-67.