A conversation on accelerating innovation in biopharma and life sciences through global collaboration and alliances

We note and reflect on the power of international partnering and collaborations that led to many of the innovations that were brought to market extremely quickly and successfully during the Covid-19 pandemic. These collaborative global approaches suggest the potential for developing broader, open innovation models in more extensive regional and global collaborations for other biopharma and life science market segments. In this article, we adopt a ‘virtual panel discussion format” to frame and discuss potential issues and models that would need to be designed, developed and tested, with the purpose of engaging emerging global regions as equal partners. We also consider similar challenges for regions within countries – even in the US - that lack significant sources for capital across the company life cycle. Several recent open innovation alliance approaches or models are discussed as potential models. They are: the Eli Lilly FIP Net (fully integrated pharmaceutical network); the Enlight Bioscience alliance developed by Pure Tech Ventures; the Harrington Project linking academia to industry; and, the Corporate Accelerator model notably recently expanded globally by Illumina. We outline a proposal to create a guiding coalition, or “think tank” to further test and develop the proposals discussed herein.