The “Art of Collaborations”: Understanding the Anatomy of Transformative Transactions in Biopharma

Abstract

This article highlights the factors that drive successful collaborations and partnerships that underlie accessing transformative technologies, and financially sharing of value created through eventual successful commercialization and incorporation into the Pharma 3.0 and then Pharma 4.0 business models.  We highlight the “softer factors” of the partnerships and collaborations that relate to the commonality of culture and vision of the partners and how they “fit” into a working, collaborative partnership and/or M&A transaction, and then into the ultimate product(s) and services that are brought to the market to create shared value. We posit that such transactions often fail because of reasons that do not involve either technology or market; but relate to “softer” human-related factors. For illustrative purposes, we frame our discussions around several and very successful larger top tier biopharma companies that are well known for accessing external technologies as a source for transformative innovation.