Archived Content
8:00 am Continental Breakfast, Interactive Breakout Discussion Groups and Networking
Grab a cup of coffee and delve deeper into some of the overarching concerns facing alliances today. These are moderated round tables with brainstorming and interactive problem solving, allowing conference participants from diverse backgrounds to have frank discussion while exchanging strategic ideas, experiences, and developing future collaborations around a focused topic.
Table 1: Alliance Launch
Moderator: Patrick Mascia, Analyst, Vantage Partners
Organizations commit significant resource to alliance deals that are central components of the organization’s long term strategy. Too often, however, such deals get “thrown over the fence” from those who identify the asset, to those responsible for closing negotiations, to those finally responsible for managing the working relationship with the partner organization. This group will explore some of the challenges and some best practices for launching an alliance for success.
How, if at all, does your organization employ a systematic approach to launch alliances?
What are the initial challenges, necessities and opportunities during an alliance launch?
Table 2: Effective Measurement of the Value of Alliance Management – A Holy Grail?
Moderator: Renee Jansen, J.D., Principal, Vantage Partners
While the discipline of alliance management is well established, organizations continue to struggle to effectively communicate their value internally, including to senior management. This group will explore some different ways across the industry that companies are using to communicate the value, discuss possible benefits and limits of each in the context of participants’ own experiences, and identify gaps in the approach Alliance Management groups take that make it difficult to articulate the value they deliver.
What are the typical measures of alliance success (overall alliance success, not just relationship measures) included in an individual's performance metrics?
What other performance metrics related to the success of the alliance relationship are used on alliance-involved stakeholders to quantify value?
Table 3: David and Goliath: Can’t We Just Get Along?
Moderator: Electra Hui, Consultant, Vantage Partners
A larger percentage of alliance deals in the life sciences space involve a Big Pharma – Biotech partnership.
What lessons in management of the larger-smaller org dynamic have we learned?
What are the most significant differences that arise on David and Goliath alliances?
What are the steps that should be taken to manage those differences?
Table 4: Changing Your Corporate Alliance Mindset: What Works / What Doesn’t
Moderator: Mark Coflin, Executive Director, Business Development and Licensing, Alliance Management, Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation
How do you build a compelling vision and mission?
What are the core competencies & capabilities required?
How do you get CEO & senior management engagement?
What questions should senior management ask as they implement policies, processes, SOPs that will apply to (and possible conflict with) partners.
How do you manage “toxic” personnel?
Table 5: Introducing Alliance Management in Newly Established Biotech Start-Ups – Creating Collaborative Innovation Ecosystems from Scratch
Moderator: Yuri Khakhanov, Division Head, Department of Nanotechnology Analysis and Forecast, Russian Corporation of Nanotechnology (RUSNANO)
What types of alliances should innovative enterprises form?
Which alliance management skills do companies need to possess and tools use?
What are the roles of different organizations in ecosystem?
How can organizations develop a culture of open innovation?
What are the ways to create value and share it among stakeholders involved?
Additional Discussion Groups to be Announced
9:30 Chairperson's Opening Remarks
Stuart Kliman J.D., Partner, Vantage Partners
9:40 The Myth of the Monolithic Culture: How to Create and Recreate Shared Culture
Susan Sullivan, Ph.D., Senior Director, Alliance Management, ImmunoGen, Inc.
In the process of identifying and evaluating potential alliances, there is a growing focus on pre-deal diligence assessments of company culture. Correspondingly, being seen as a "partner of choice" is increasingly valued in the biotech/pharma space. And, many alliance best practices focus on the keys to a successful launch which is usually the point of closest alignment. This presentation will focus on the challenges in recognizing and adapting to changes in culture which often occur during the lifecycle of an alliance as a result of mergers/acquisitions, changes in organizational structure, loss of project champions or movement of a program through different parts of a company. In short, what to do when you start wondering "what happened to the person I married"?
10:10 Leveraging Alliance Management Insights and Capabilities for Pre-Deal and Deal Initiation Support
Ursula Vosylius, Senior Alliance Manager, R&D, Amgen
Alliance management is uniquely situated at the interface between deal teams and the internal business. Alliance managers understand the downstream implications of deal terms as well as the importance of a successful integration/transition to the business. They live with agreements day in and day out and therefore have valuable insights that can help shape the formation of an alliance. This session discusses Amgen’s approach to evolving its alliance management capability to engage earlier in the deal-making process and to be accountable for initiating the operational aspects of all new alliances to better ensure success right from the start.
10:40 Coffee Break in the Exhibit Hall
11:10 How to Ensure Your Alliance is Healthy throughout the Life Cycle
Karen Denton, Director, Alliance Management, Bayer HealthCare Pharmaceuticals
If the purpose of alliance management is to ensure non-technical failure for projects, then successful alliances can end up being from cradle to grave. Whilst product life cycles are somewhat self-managing in terms of investment and resources, alliances may not be. So how do we make sure alliances evolve productively? This talk will look at options for maintaining healthy alliances including renegotiation, relaunch and resetting, where resetting reflects on a change in alliance needs but without the need for a wholesale relaunch – i.e., a mini-relaunch.
11:40 When Collaborations End: How to Part Company
Roland Ghanem, BSc, MBA, Executive Director, Alliance Management, Merck & Co., Inc.
Eventually, all collaborations come to an end. The priority for alliance managers is to ensure partnerships end from "natural causes" (i.e. patent expiration, or a negative scientific finding) rather than from an ineffective relationship between the partners. Whatever the cause, an important role of the alliance manager is to manage the process in a manner that minimizes disruption to both partners. While every alliance presents unique termination challenges, the presentation will describe in general the typical phases leading up to termination, some processes that could be considered, and pitfalls to be avoided.
12:10 pm Lunch on Your Own
1:30 Chairperson's Opening Remarks
David Yeary, Vice President, Life Sciences, Merrill DataSite
KEYNOTE PRESENTATION
1:40 The Changing Landscape of Pharmaceutical Alliances, Emerging Trends and Outlook for Continued Innovation
Christoph Pittius, Ph.D., Vice President, Strategic Partnering & Business Development, CVGI iMED, AstraZeneca
In light of declining pharmaceutical productivity, Business Development plays a key role in complementing and supporting internal R&D at pharma companies. Dr. Pittius will provide an overview on historical and current partnering trends and how they sometimes alternate between favoring late- or early-stage licensing opportunities. The presentation contrasts new models of accessing innovation, academic alliances, early-and late-stage approaches and pharma peer-to-peer partnerships. It points out the role of innovative financial structures in a competitive environment and how a well-structured partnering process can be instrumental to landing the deal. By employing the right process to the right licensing opportunity and paying early attention to payors’ needs higher quality partnerships can contribute to bringing new innovative medicines to patients.
This section explores the practical utilization of alliance management throughout a variety of partnership types, models and strategies. While the previous section focused on refining the management role, these skills are put into practice and leveraged throughout this series of discussions.
2:25 The Alliance Manager’s Role in Contract Negotiations
Gene Slowinski, Ph.D., Director, Strategic Alliance Research, School of Management, Rutgers University; Managing Partner, Alliance Management Group
The most effective alliance managers influence the terms and conditions in the contract that impact implementation. Common areas of concern include allocating intellectual property rights (both background and foreground) clearly identifying the boundaries of the relationship and ensuring that both sides agree on the financial model that will fund implementation. Fuzzyness on these issues is a common cause of unnecessary friction. I will describe the tools used to help alliance managers describe their needs in these key areas.
Interactive Discussion
2:55 Patent Pools as a Partnering Strategy for Developing Country Markets
Moderators: Steven M. Ferguson, CLP, Deputy Director, Licensing & Entrepreneurship, Office of Technology Transfer, National Institutes of Health
Chan Park, General Counsel, Medicines Patent Pool
The Medicines Patent Pool was founded with the support of UNITAID, a global health initiative that seeks to increase the availability of treatments for HIV, tuberculosis and malaria through sustainable financing and creative market interventions. Patent holders “pool” their patents, which are then licensed out to generic manufacturers to make low-cost medicines for sale in developing countries. In 2012, the Licensing Executives Society presented the “Deals of Distinction” Award to The Medicines Patent Pool, the US National Institutes of Health/University of Illinois at Chicago and Gilead Sciences for license agreements that expand access to affordable HIV medicines in developing countries. Representatives from the Medicines Patent Pool and NIH will host an open discussion around Industry-University-Government partnerships, using recent examples as case studies to highlight best practices from this unique model for strategic partnerships.
3:35 Refreshment Break in the Exhibit Hall
4:05 Co-Presentation: Transforming and Unlocking Value in Biopharmaceutical Development
Christopher Erickson, Vice President, Strategic Account Leader, PAREXEL
Brian Thornton, Vice President, Strategic Account Leader, PAREXEL
PAREXEL International has formulated a multidisciplinary and systems-oriented approach to outsourced clinical development, bringing efficiencies, scalability, and standardization to the process. This presentation will highlight PAREXEL's investment in understanding the value of these long-term, substantial, and committed relationships among CROs and sponsors. It will also highlight key findings to biopharmaceutical companies of engaging in Strategic Partnerships to drive greater value through seamless integration, aligned goals and mutual investment. Finally, we will discuss insights from a new research initiative - the first study to understand the current outsourcing model and the value Strategic Partnerships provide to biopharmaceutical companies of all sizes. It defines the next-generation of Strategic Partnerships that advance and optimize clinical development, offering the industry greater clarity on the facets of Strategic Partnerships that are working today, and how these relationships should evolve tomorrow.
4:45 Co-Presentation: Service-Based Alliances in the Life Sciences Industry: Are You Getting Accretive Value from Collaboration?
Michael W. Young, Vice President, Alliance Management, Business Development, PPD
Debra Vent, Director, Business Development, VirtualScopics
Progressive contract research organizations (CROs) are increasingly entering into collaborative, risk-shared, and mutually-invested "development alliances" with sponsor companies. In addition, these advanced CROs are providing streamlined relationships with pharma and diagnostic sponsors by managing the growing numbers of sub-contracted suppliers to sponsors for agreed-upon work. These "corporate alliance" relationships are rapidly evolving into collaborative alliances though which the sponsor can benefit in many ways if the supplier is integrated for mutual success. This presentation will help outline key areas where mutual accretive value can be developed between CROs, sponsors, and subcontracted suppliers resulting in faster speed to target, reduced sponsor oversight requirements, and planned lower costs among other values.
5:25 End of Day
5:30 – 8:30 Dinner Short Course (Click Here for Details)*