Emergence and Evolution of R&D Alliance Management

As bioscience R&D collaborations have grown in volume and complexity over the last decade, so has widespread adoption of formal alliance management, especially by the larger companies. Yet despite the emergence of formal tools such as balanced scorecards and alliance health surveys, this approach has its limitations. As the nature of many collaborations shifts from outsourcing or intellectual property transfer to true innovation partnerships, formal alliance management needs to be supplemented by other informal ingredients to ensure successful outcomes.

Emergence of formal alliance management

Historically, most R&D collaborations could be classified into one of these categories:

1. Intellectual Property Transfer: A large pharma would fund early-stage academic research or discovery programmes at a small biotech until the work could be brought in-house.
2. Co-Development: One party with relevant regulatory and medical expertise would work with the owner of a product asset to jointly bring it to market.
3. Straight Outsourcing: One party performs specific activities for the other party, justified by the former’s specialist expertise or lower cost base.

In all the above cases, each side conducted its own clearly defined activities, with information and outputs exchanged at specified points in the process, much like how outsourced manufacturing partnerships operate. Consequently, to ensure each party delivered their prescribed contributions within budget and timelines, the first wave of alliance management initiatives implemented process management tools e.g. deliverables tracking, project gantt charts and service level agreements.

To oversee the alliance and resolve issues as they arose, formal project governance structures were also established. Typically, one would have a Joint Steering Committee, a Joint Scientific Review Committee and Joint Project Teams, plus pairs of co-alliance managers and co-project leaders assigned as the key “point people” for coordinating all the activities.

Owing to the inherently complex and unpredictable nature of bioscience R&D, many alliances experienced the need for frequent changes of focus and direction as experiments failed unexpectedly or serendipitous breakthroughs emerged. Whereas the first generation process management tools, being focused on operational metrics and contractual obligations, tended to drive the collaborators towards the original operating plan which was no longer valid.

In response, some companies began implementing balanced scorecards and other similar tools to align goals and and maintain consistent strategies while allowing the collaborators to operationally adjust to unanticipated scientific results and regulatory rulings. Balanced scorecards work by aligning strategic goals and articulating the strategies for achieving these goals as a “cause-and-effect” flow of linked objectives and metrics with respect to people, processes, internal customers and stakeholder outcomes. The governance structures implemented with this approach are similar to that described earlier, with the addition of problem-solving teams for prioritised groups of objectives, the latter referred to as “strategic themes”. There have been several well-documented success stories[1], although these mostly relate to major clinical development partnerships between large pharma and major CROs.

Limitations of the formal approach

Implementation of the formal alliance management machinery (joint committees, teams, co-leaders, metrics, etc.) in the large strategic partnerships is often supplemented by efforts to drive the corresponding behavioural changes. For example, the oft-quoted Solvay-Quintiles case required:

1. Alignment of personal performance reviews and incentives with the collaboration’s objectives and metrics.
2. Major communication and mobilisation activities, using[2] “such tools as laminated strategy maps, video presentations by company executives and alliance leaders, and even an alliance game to make sure all stakeholders understood the mission and the goals of the partnership … followed up with periodic newsletters and e-mails touting progress made”.

Now let us consider whether such an approach makes sense in the more typical case of a “David-and-Goliath” innovation partnership where a large pharma is working with a small biotech, academic laboratory or specialist CRO. Often these alliances aim for collaborative innovation i.e. working hand-in-hand to innovate a new scientific approach or overcome a key challenge by sparking off each other’s know-how. In the context of such big-small innovation partnerships:

• The governance structures mentioned earlier continue to be applicable.
• Comprehensive goal alignment at all organisational levels is not feasible as the needs and culture of the small player differ greatly from the large player; at best a concise “scorecard” for a small number of joint objectives and metrics is the most one could hope for.
• Driving behavioural change top-down via a comprehensive performance management and communication programme is not practical for the large player since this partnership would be just one of scores of such collaborations that it participates in – each with a different small player, at different stages in the lifecycle, with different needs.
• Overly heavy process management can cause more harm than good for creative innovation[3].

Informal bottom-up behavioural change mechanisms needed

For David-and-Goliath innovation partnerships in particular, bottom-up informal mechanisms are needed to complement and address the shortcomings of the top-down formal change mechanisms mentioned earlier. Unlike the latter which have been well characterised, the best practices for informal bottom-up change mechanisms are still evolving rapidly as companies learn from real-life experience what works and what doesn’t. Nevertheless, we will mention two mechanisms below which this author has found to be powerful.

While it might be difficult to achieve comprehensive alignment of goals and objectives at all levels for reasons mentioned earlier, this does not mean a “win-win” cannot be achieved. What matters is that each side of the collaboration understands and allows for the other’s “currencies” i.e. those things that are most important and desired by each side. It is not about defining shared goals (which is the usual approach for “alignment”) but rather, recognising the other party has different aims, respecting these aims and allowing them to be achieved as long as there is no significant detrimental effect to oneself. Understanding and then addressing the other party’s currencies is a skill that both sides of a collaboration need to develop and practise[4].

Another key driver for a very productive innovation partnership is “co-creative collaboration” i.e. where synergetic interactions between the team members from both sides lead to solutions which are “more than the sum of the parts”. This means team members not only contribute what they know and can perform individually, but also push each other’s thinking, working at the intersections of each other’s know-how, to “co-create” superior outcomes together. The main differences between traditional teamwork and co-creative collaboration are illustrated below:

Consistent co-creative collaboration is best achieved via a combination of:

• Educating team members on the relevant principles, behaviours and practices.
• Selecting team members with both content knowledge and aptitude to work this way.
• Deploying skilled team facilitators to manage the team process in support of the project leaders.
• Learning by doing i.e. continuous honing through regular practice and reflection.

Concluding remarks

The emergence of formal alliance management tools and dedicated alliance management people on both sides of the alliance is a good start. Nevertheless, alliance management practice in bioscience R&D needs to continue evolving in order to deal with:

• The inherent complexity and unpredictability of bioscience R&D.
• The increasing prevalence of collaborations between two entities of greatly differing size, culture and aims.

An earlier version of this article was first published on pharmaphorum