The industry’s focus is on living organisms, and the rigorously enforced standards make it an distinct consideration for business leaders. These characteristics make the industry an ideal environment index for innovation. They have led to major breakthroughs in agricultural yields, biofuels, and life-saving pharmaceuticals.
When it comes to revenue-generating strategies biotech startups have a variety of options. The majority of them choose a technology partnership or an asset creation-and-out-licensing strategy. Technology partnering can generate more revenue, but with less risk of financial loss while out-licensing and asset creation strategy will yield higher returns when it’s successful. A growing number of biotechs in the research stage operate in a hybrid approach that combines both approaches.
The people who select a product-focused strategy can achieve commercial success in the event that they manage to bring their pipelines up to the right place, and attract a large pharmaceutical partner or investor with deep pockets. This is a costly proposition but managing opportunistic approaches to leverage outside resources with the right scientific decisions about homegrown projects is vital.
In addition, the “platform” model is an alternative way to earn revenue. It’s a lower-cost method than the development-oriented model, but it also involves significant risk. In this model biotechs develop and own their platform technology before partnering with pharma giants to create a portfolio of drug discovery projects aimed at specific diseases (i.e. disease that is x in biology, y). This is the method Advinus Therapeutics and a few others have taken.