The focus of the industry on living human beings and highly controlled standards provide unique considerations for business leaders. These attributes make the industry an ideal environment for innovation. They have produced major breakthroughs in agricultural yields, biofuels, and life-saving pharmaceuticals.

Biotech companies that are starting out have many options when it comes down to revenue generation strategies, with the majority opting for a technology-based partnership or an asset creation and out-licensing approach. Technology partnering can generate faster revenue and lower financial risk, while strategies for asset creation and outlicensing can yield significantly greater returns. A increasing number of biotechs at the research stage employ a hybrid approach that combines these two approaches.

Those who opt for an approach to biotechnological synthesis of remedies development that is oriented towards product can achieve commercial success if they can get their pipeline to a suitable stage and find a Pharma partner or an investor with a large sum of money. This is a costly venture. It is crucial to consider the balance between opportunistic strategies in leveraging assets from outside and make best scientific decisions for homegrown projects.

Alternately, the “platform” model is an alternative path to revenue. It’s a cheaper option than the product-oriented development but it comes with significant risk. In this model, biotechs own and develop their own platform technology prior to teaming with pharma companies to create a portfolio of drug discovery initiatives that target specific diseases (i.e. disease that is x in biology, y). Advinus Therapeutics, among others have embraced this model.