Listing analysis and research matching partnering:
AstraZeneca's acquisition of Medimmune
AstraZeneca's recent acquisition of Medimmine will affect the future of companies like Infinity Pharmaceuticals, Medarex, Critical Therapeutics, Biota Holdings who have partnerships with MedImmune in a range of areas including oncology, respiratory disease, infectious diseases and lupus. AstraZeneca's plan to merge MedImmune with Cambridge Antibody Technology will be watched keenly by partners in this space.
Biopharmaceutical partnering in China
Multinational pharmaceutical companies are increasingly investing in China through alliances and the building of new centres. Much of the investment is to supplement rather than replace the research and development already occurring outside China and is focused on development and processes than be easily codified and regulated.
Reducing alliance risks
Consultants are in business to disagree with each other. Which makes it odd is that they all agree on at least one thing, somewhere around a half of all alliances 'fail'. But are they right? Research by Silico and IBM conducted among 148 senior executives in the biopharmaceutical industry indicates that far fewer of the partnerships which analysts reported as having failed can be regarded as true failures.
The impact of alliances on share prices
It seems that alliances are good for companies, at least their share prices, whether or not the alliance achieves any positive outcomes. This raises two intruiging questions. First, why equity markets look upon alliances and partnerships so favourably in the first place. Second, does the equity market's view of alliances and the premium given to alliances fluctuate over time?
The impact of cultural factors on alliance performance
Intangible factors such as cultural compatibility, an openness to knowledge sharing and to new ideas and a determination to make the partnership work are the most important factors in predicting the outcome of a partnership. These conclusions are based on data collected from 148 executives in biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies.
The key drivers of alliance formation
Two factors, the deal on offer and the scientific expertise on offer, dominate the underlying reasons senior executives in biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies enter a partnership. This conclusion is drawn from data collected in two surveys conducted among senior executives from biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies.
The impact of conditional payment mechanisms on alliance outcomes
Conditional payments are commonly used in biopharmaceutical alliances. Recent research among senior executives in the biopharmaceutical industry by Silico Research and IBM showed that 81% of partnerships were using some form of conditional payment, such as options, milestone and license payments and royalties (n=130). Milestone payments were the most frequently used mechanism with 74% of surveyed partnerships using them. The research showed, however, that conditional payments do not improve the chances of a partnership succeeding.
GE Healthcare alliances in the medical devices and diagnostic market
GE Healthcare, a $17 billion unit of General Electric Company, has an active alliance programme in a range of technologies covering medical imaging, healthcare IT, diagnostic imaging agents, patient monitoring, drug discovery and protein separation.
Learning from game theory
Research by Silico Research and IBM has found that a respondent's assessment of the partner's openness to knowledge sharing and new ideas, and the cultural compatibility between the two partners showed a strong correlation with the success of the partnership as reported by the respondent. Why would the partner's openness to knowledge sharing and new ideas play a more important role in the respondent's assessment of the success of the alliance than, for example, the quality of the partner's staff or the partners's delivery on commitments?
Procter and Gamble relies on collaboration to drive innovation
At the start of 2000 Procter and Gamble's newly appointed chief executive officer, AG Lafley, announced that the company would move away from a model based on in-house innovation towards sourcing more of its innovation from outside. Mr Lafley's stated goal was that P&G would become known as the company that 'collaborates, inside and out, better than any other company in the world'. His target was to source 50% of the company's innovation from external companies. At the time only 15% of P&G's innovation came from outside.
Balancing control and trust in alliances
Trust is one of the most important components of a successful alliance. It is also one of the most difficult aspects of the partnership to get back into balance when the alliance starts to go off the rails. A paper published recently by the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals tries to cast light on this difficult subject.
Cross-sector collaboration set to grow
Cross-sector partnering and licensing looks like being one of the faster growing collaboration areas over the next few years as companies look to leverage their intellectual property investments beyond core markets. We believe that as large companies struggle to find attractive new partners in their own sectors and increasingly get bogged down in anti-trust issues and the conundrum of collaborating with competitors, then looking outside their own sector for licensing and intellectual property-based collaboration is going to become a more and more attractive proposition.
Using balanced scorecards as a tool for partnership analysis
Since the concept was developed by Kaplan and Norton in the early 1990's balanced scorecards have become a standard part of the business planning tool-set for large companies and have accumulated a large fanbase across large segments of the private and public sectors. Proponents of the balanced scorecard's case is made significantly easier by the fact that they can point to some notable success stories.
Exubera shows the importance of having an exit strategy
Pfizer has announced that it would drop Exubera, its poorly selling inhaled insulin developed in partnership with Nektar Therapeutics. Unfortunately a tough business orientated decision was turned into something akin to an alliance manager's worst nightmare. It seems that something went badly wrong in the communication between the partners with Nektar Therapeutics claiming that it only learned about the decision from Pfizer's press release.
Life science companies optimistic about 2008
A recent survey by Silico Research has revealed that executives in life science companies are optimistic about the prospects for their industry going into 2008.
The impact of large alliances on share prices
Do alliances and partnerships really detract from the market value of biotechnology companies?
Alliances drive the hunt for clean energy
Motor companies looking to perfect hybrid and plug-in electric cars as the solution to soaring oil costs and concerns about the environment see alliances as the way forward.
BioPartnering 2008
The terms of a deal on offer, a partner's development expertise and their alliance management skills are the top drivers of alliance formation according to senior partnering business development executives in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical devices industry and research institutes who participated in the BioPartnering 2008 survey.
