The industry’s focus is on living organisms, and the highly monitored standards make it a distinct consideration for business executives. These characteristics also make the industry a natural incubator for innovation, leading to some major breakthroughs that have boosted yields in agriculture, produced biofuels and led to life-saving pharmaceutical products.
Biotech startups have a variety of choices when it comes to revenue generation strategies, with most opting for either a technology partnering or an approach to asset creation and out-licensing. Technology partnering can result in more revenue and lower financial risk, whereas asset creation and outlicensing strategies are able to yield much more returns. A growing number of biotechs in the research stage operate an hybrid model that blends both strategies.
If you choose to go with a product-oriented development strategy can achieve commercial success when they get their pipeline to a suitable stage and find a Pharma partner or an investor with deep pockets. This can be an expensive option. It is essential to balance opportunistic approaches in leveraging assets from outside and make right scientific decisions regarding domestic projects.
The «platform» model is an alternative alternative to generate revenue. It is a less expensive route than the product-oriented development, but it also involves substantial risks. In this model the biotech owns and develops its platform technology prior to partnering with big pharma companies to generate a portfolio of drug discovery projects that focus on specific disease areas (i.e. disease x in biology y). This is the approach that Advinus Therapeutics and a few others have adopted.