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Alliances glossary & taxonomy
Applications
Map: Finding guide to terms in these glossaries Site
Map Related glossaries include Business
of biopharmaceuticals, Financial, Intellectual
property & legal, Research
alliance management: Collaboration. Partnership.
Alliance. Working together in science is not a new idea, but
pharmaceutical and companion diagnostic companies have developed novel
strategies and tools for navigating and negotiating alliances.
Strategic
Alliance Management Congress May 7-9, 2012 • Philadelphia, PA Program | Register | Download Brochure alliances:
Agreements between two or more companies to cooperate
in some way. Originally a military and legal term for treaties between
sovereign states, could be offensive, defensive or both. Narrower terms: alliance
networks, emerging company alliances, strategic
alliances.
CORDIS Community Research and Development Information Service:
An important source on EU [European Union] R&D programmes and relevant
matters ... distributed: via the CORDIS World Wide Web service, which includes
access to the CORDIS databases. http://www.cordis.lu/en/home.html
CRADA Cooperative Research and Development Agreement: A written
agreement between a private company and a government agency to work together
on a project. By entering into a CRADA, the [US] Federal government and non-
Federal partners can optimize their resources and cost effectively
perform research by sharing the costs of this research. The collaborating
partner agrees to provide funds, personnel, services, facilities, equipment
or other resources needed to conduct a specific research or development
effort while the Federal government agrees to provide similar resources
but not funds directly to the partner. http://www.usgs.gov/tech-transfer/what-crada.html
collaboration:
Collaboration can be horizontal (a group of small companies), vertical
(suppliers and customers), sectoral (same industry sector) or lateral (complementary
but different sectors). From the Latin, meaning to work with.
The biomedical
industry faces a crisis in productivity, with rapidly rising costs for R&D
but declining results. While many other industries have found ways to enhance
performance using pre-competitive collaboration, the biomedical industry has
been reluctant to embrace such sharing of information, investments, risk and
costs. There are, however, encouraging signs that important shifts are taking
place, as evidenced by a growing number of consortia, programs for open
innovation, and experiments with crowd-sourcing to find solutions outside a
single company. One area ripe for collaboration is the field of neglected
diseases, where the shortage of traditional profit opportunities mean that
companies are forced to re-think how to achieve the most productive results. Collaborative Innovation in
Biomedicine April 5-6, 2011 • Philadelphia, PA Program | Register
| Download Brochure communities of practice:
Informal groups ... the latest technique for
getting employees to share what they know, seven ways to encourage such
communities in your company. CIO Magazine, May 2002 Excerpted
with permission of Harvard Business School Press. Cultivating Communities of
Practice: A Guide to Managing Knowledge by Etienne Wenger, Richard McDermott and
William M. Snyder. Copyright 2002 http://www.cio.com/archive/051502/excerpt.html
competitive
advantage: The quest for competitive advantage
often inspires executives to imitate the strategies of the most successful
companies. Interestingly, however, precisely opposite factors are considered
sources of competitive advantage at different points in time. ... Clayton
Christensen, a leading thinker on disruptive technologies, alerts managers to
the imperative of understanding the context that supports a particular
competitive advantage. He explains why, for example, pharmaceutical companies'
current focus on ever larger mergers is moving them in exactly the wrong
direction at exactly the wrong time. C Christensen, Past and Future of
Competitive Advantage, Sloan Management Review, 42 (2): 105-109, Winter 2001
http://web.mit.edu/smr/issue/2001/winter/9/ competitor collaboration:
Intended to explain how the agencies analyze certain anti-
trust issues raised by cooperation among competitors. Antitrust
Guidelines for Collaborations among Competitors, Federal Trade Commission, Dept.
of Justice, April, 2000. http://www.ftc.gov/os/2000/04/ftcdojguidelines.pdf
Related terms:
Research
pharmaceutical pre-competitive R&D, RJV Research joint
venture consortium, consortia:
A consortium is typically a loose,
long- term alliance
between competitors in a given industry. Research and development consortia
are a specific type of consortia that focus on basic research and sometimes
applied research, rather than downstream activities such as production.
While joint ventures and licensing partnerships are relatively traditional
forms of inter-firm collaboration, R&D consortia are new to the scene.
Under the National Cooperative Research Act (NCRA) of 1984, these
sorts of industry- based consortia became immune to anti- trust legislation
in the United States. The NCRA emphasizes the pre- competitive
aspect of R & D ... To date, no U.S. consortium has been prosecuted under
any anti- trust legislation. The collaboration of competitors in early
phases of the innovation process can yield great advances for the entire
industry involved in the consortia. "Collaboration between Firms
in Information Technology" Chris Rigatuso, Takeshi Tachi, Dennis Sylvester,
Mark Soper; Strategic Computing and Communications Technology course *,
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, Univ. of
California- Berkeley,
US, Spring 1997 Related terms: technology consortia; Intellectual
property & legal anti- trust
discovery rights: Selling only research findings in the agreement
while keeping rights to all the knowledge that is uncovered along the way.
(Millennium Pharmaceuticals has been cited as an example of this model.)
expectations
management: extension of agreement: Agreement coming out of a previous association,
may depend upon the achievement of specific milestones.
joint venture: An association formed for a specific purpose (and
duration) between two or more parties. Originally a real estate term, now
use much more widely. Unlike most partnerships, a joint venture anticipates
eventual termination of the arrangement. Related terms: NCRPA
definition of
"joint venture", pre- competitive R&D, RJV Research joint venture.
keiretsu:
The framework of relationships in postwar Japan's big banks
and big firms... About Economics http://economics.about.com/library/glossary/bldef-keiretsu-system.htm
leveraging:
Creation of collaborative relationships or formal agreements with others outside
FDA. The collaborations may develop as partnerships, cooperative agreements, or
other similar arrangements entered into by a component of FDA and another
organization, such as a corporation, educational institution, trade or consumer
group, government agency, or foreign government. Leveraging is always
cooperative and beneficial to all the parties involved, and is structured to
advance FDA’s mission to protect and promote the Nation’s public health. ...
Resources that might be leveraged are numerous, but typical examples would be
expertise, equipment, emerging technologies, and databases. FDA, Guidance for
FDA Staff, Leveraging Handbook, An agency handbook for effective collaboration,
2003 http://www.fda.gov/downloads/AboutFDA/CentersOffices/CDER/WhatWeDo/UCM121662.pdf NCRA National Cooperative Research Act:
Restrictions on multi- firm
cooperative research relationships were lifted with the passage of NCRA
in 1984. This law was enacted to encourage U.S. firms to collaborate on
generic, precompetitive research. To gain protection from antitrust litigation,
NCRA requires firms engaging in RJVs [Research Joint Ventures] to register
them with [the US] DOJ Department of Justice.] [National Science Foundation
"Science and Engineering Indicators 2000" http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/srs/seind00/access/c2/c2s6.htm
NCRPA National Cooperative Research and Production Act:
1993
amendment to the National Cooperative Research Act (NCRA), encouraging
corporations to engage in joint ventures for purposes of research and development
and/or production.
partnering: See Financials
partnering
partnership:: A business enterprise entered into for profit which
is owned by more than one person, each of whom is a "partner." A partnership
may be created by a formal written agreement, but may be based on an oral
agreement or just a handshake. Each partner invests a certain amount (money,
assets and/ or effort) which establishes an agreed upon percentage of ownership,
is responsible for all the debts and contracts of the partnership even
though another partner created the debt or entered into the contract, has
a share in management decisions, and shares in profits and losses according
to the percentage of the total investment. ... A "limited partnership" limits the responsibility for debts beyond
the investment to the managing "general partners." The investing "limited
partners" cannot participate in management and are limited to specific
percentages of profit. A partnership differs from a "joint venture,"
which involves more than one investor for only a specific short term project
and prompt division of profits. [law.com] http://dictionary.law.com/definition2.asp?selected=1460&bold=|||
pre-competitive R&D, Research Joint Venture RJV: Research
pharmaceutical
SBIR Small Business Innovation Research:
A highly competitive
[US] program that encourages small business to explore their technological
potential and provides the incentive to profit from its commercialization. http://www.sbir.gov/ STTR Small Business Technology Transfer:
SEE SBIR/STTR Small Business Technology Transfer
strategic alliances:
Drug development is extremely capital intensive, costing an
estimated $500 million and taking 10 years or more to bring a product to
market. Most biotechnology companies have no product sales (oft-quoted revenues
and exports consist mainly of interest income from invested capital and income
earned from alliances) and lack the resources to exploit the products they are
developing. For biotech firms, licensing brings in much needed income and
improves access to the equity markets by validating their commercial potential
to outside investors. The multinational pharmaceutical industry in turn gets an
infusion of new products and technologies to sustain earnings at a time it is
suffering from a dramatic decline in new chemical entities. Product Definition,
The Biopharmaceutical Sector, Industry Canada, 2003 http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/epic/internet/inbio-pha.nsf/en/df00020e.html#2.1
May refer to a joint venture,
partnership or an
alliance network. Strategic implies that one (or each) companies
have something unique to bring to the agreement. (Not all alliances are
as strategic as their participants initially hoped for.) May well involve
more than two entities.
TRAs Technology Research Associations:
Japanese groups working
through MITI (now METI).
technology consortia:
The era of companies doing everything in- house has passed. Collaboration of competitors
in the early phases of the innovation process can result in great benefits
for the entire industry. In the US pre- competitive R&D consortia
have flourished since passage of the National Cooperative Research Act (NCRA) in 1984. Japan had Technology Research Associations (TRAs)
even earlier. The development of standards by consortia can play a useful
role in emerging and disruptive technologies. Consortia can share R&D
costs and risks, particularly when existing technologies are in flux.
They can work against short product life cycles requiring high frequency
of innovations. But new and truly disruptive technologies are a potential
minefield. Shared and complementary visions, governance, finance,
communication and trust can be difficult to maintain. Intellectual property
rights can be problematic.
technology service agreement: Often refers to information technology,
including agreements to maintain, service, customize and update information
technology.
Bibliography
Evolving Terminologies for Emerging Technologies
Comments? Questions?
Revisions? Mary Chitty mchitty@healthtech.com
Last revised June 15, 2012
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alliance
strategies: As the first decade of the 21st century
comes to an end, the pharmaceutical industry is facing a major revenue downturn.
The contributing factors are the expiration of patents on a number of
blockbuster drugs and the stagnant productivity of R&D. As a
consequence generics are expected to seriously erode revenues and the
introduction of new proprietary drugs is not adequate. The once insular
pharmaceutical industry has been forced to look outside beyond its walls for
drug pipeline candidates. The result has been an almost expediential
growth of the past decade in the number and value of strategic alliances.
Insight Pharma Reports Strategic
Alliances: Synergistic Path to Value Creation 2010
Related terms: alliances, alliance networks, competitor collaboration, consortium, joint
venture, partnering, research joint venture, strategic alliance, technology
transfer, technology web; Intellectual
property & legal anti- trust
Related
term: collaboration auctions
Insight Pharma Reports Strategic
Alliances: Synergistic Path to Value Creation 2010