PARTNERSHIP AND INNOVATION IN THE LIFE SCIENCES - Innovation in the Biopharmaceutical Industry - page 128

developing leadership, and developing more strategic approaches to managing R&D
assets.
However, while partnering between universities and industry offers exciting
opportunities, it also suffers from problems such as lack of adequate funding for
the university teams; pressure on contract pricing from industry partners; asymme-
try of knowledge and skills between the BioPharma organisations and universities
that hamper partnering efforts; lack of administrative support from the university;
problems with agreeing IP terms for technology transfer; and excessive university
bureaucracy without adequate resources to address the bureaucratic barriers.
In spite of these problems industry-university partnerships are growing. The
research identifies a number of critical success factors for these partnerships, which
include:
Strong leadership . A leader, in the form of an internal project champion, is the most
important success factor for the partnership. A leader is needed to communicate the
aims and objectives of the R&D partnership to all the key stakeholders, to pick up
an R&D project and make it happen, and to introduces new business practices to
solve problems experienced by the partnership.
Developing two way interactions . In partnering projects there is evidence of emerg-
ing reciprocal relationships where groups provide specialist skills or resources
needed for the project and two-way licencing of technologies to enhance research
capability in both organisations involved in the partnership.
Improving organisational symmetry . Companies appear to be better prepared and
resourced than universities to engage in partnerships. Often they have long experi-
ence of partnering and know-how in the execution of projects: skills that are lacking
in many of the universities. Many companies, even if relatively new to R&D partner-
ing, have well-established systems to support partnering and project management.
Universities, on the other hand, are generally used to working with research councils
and charities, hence their systems are not well organised to deal with commercial
organisations. This misalignment leads to inefficiency in partnering and results in
much frustration. This asymmetry in size and resources has been identified as an
important barrier to partnering and novel structures may need to be considered (for
example, multiple universities partnering in a consortium arrangement) to overcome
this.
Partnership contracts and agreements . Difficulties are experienced in using tradi-
tional contracts to enforce R&D partnerships, especially where the inputs or the
outputs may be uncertain. Better understanding of the potential pitfalls of tradi-
tional contract arrangements is critical to effective partnering and there is a need to
develop partnering arrangements that are more conducive to the exchange of infor-
mation and ideas (critically important in innovation) between the partners while