Throughout the years of doing business on both slides of the Atlantic, a key observation has continued to influence the way we support clients with hands-on implementation focused advisory services.
The US biopharmaceutical market is inundated with billions of capital for development of drugs, devices, and novel approaches, in turn attracted by a highly lucrative end market with price levels for innovative drugs at multiples of those in other geographies.
In that ecosystem, specialist service provider firms are covering a significant share of value creation within small to mid-cap companies. They are building focused expertise based on repeat business in specific areas, grow in efficiency and transfer best practices across companies. In that environment, key management tasks involve the building of relationships with trusted providers; the differentiating of quality, reliability, and return on investment between services offered; and a continuous project management, objective setting and controlling.
In the EU, not only are budgets more limited, but also the cultural preference for in-house employment and long-term job contracts, along with a highly common suspicion vis-à-vis outside providers of expertise, create hurdles towards the utilization of service providers to an extent seen in the US. Benefits of building own internal capabilities include long-form retention of know-how, employee loyalty, dedication, team spirit, and a cost advantage – as it seems. It is impossible though to accurately measure the hidden cost: for example of a talent pool that is limited to the local catchment area of a company’s headquarters; of a workforce that is inflexible to adapt to changing business needs as a result of development progress and corporate growth; of the lack of access to best practice resulting from an inward facing work culture; and restricted access to expertise.
We work with companies on both ends of the spectrum to review the boundaries of their firm in light of their current and future business objectives, to help planning ahead, and making sure all resource required to enable success are sourced timely.