PRECOMPETITIVE COLLABORATIONS IN PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY - Collaborative Computational Technologies for Biomedical Research - page 69

increase the effectiveness of such collaborations. These lessons can be distilled
into a few clear principles which, if addressed early on in collaborative discus-
sions, can save much time and energy in the formation of any new consortia.
One thing is clear, however—consortia such as the IMI, SGC, the Biomarkers
Consortium, and Asian Cancer research group have shown that cross-company
precompetitive collaboration is feasible and provides a new route to tackling
some of the major health care challenges that exist today.

4.3.1 Best Practice Principles

1. Agree on Goals and Objectives Up Front It sounds obvious that all parties'
objectives and goals are aligned and clearly articulated when the consortium
is formed. However, this is not always the case. Frequently it is due to tacit
assumptions about the goals and objectives of other parties, but these really
need to be tested and agreed-upon explicitly. Ideally the aims and objectives
should be captured as part of any consortium agreement. While this is impor-
tant in any collaboration, it becomes even more so where multiple partners
from different sectors are involved. The deliverables have to have value for
all parties to retain the interest of the sponsoring organizations. Lack of align-
ment at this early stage has the potential to cause the consortium to fail very
early on. For example, before the launch of the Biomarkers Consortium, the
founding members had multiple discussions on what specifi c questions in the
therapeutic areas of focus might be of interest to all stakeholders in the con-
sortium [6]. For the Biomarkers Consortium this preproject consensus build-
ing was seen as critically important to the project. The single nucleotide
polymorphism (SNP) consortium had a very clear objective which was easy
to describe and identify with—other initiatives with more diverse, longer term
objectives, such as the Biomarkers Consortium and IMI, have had to work
much harder to communicate their objectives to stakeholders.
2. Strong Leadership

There needs to be a key person in each organization
that will act as the internal champion for the project to promote the project
internally and externally and act as a key conduit of information. It is impor-
tant that each organization provides the right people for these roles and gives
them the right amount of resources and authority to contribute optimally to
the consortium. This is facilitated signifi cantly when there is senior sponsorship
within the organization.
It is also important to have a single point of contact within each organization
for all the legal issues whether it is for the drawing up of consortium contracts,
discussion of data sharing issues, or other legal matters (e.g., freedom to use
materials from third parties such as transgenic animals, software, or reagents
and antitrust considerations). This was the case within the IMI and facilitated
the construction of common templates for grant agreements, for example, and
this was also one of the early lessons from the Biomarker Consortium [6].
3. Have an Agreed-Upon and Clearly Articulated IP Policy

With precom-
petitive consortia it becomes very important to have very clear IP guidelines