The Partnering Guide™
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Alliance Management Capability
We’re launching a video series: Partnering on the Edge: The Hard Work of Partnering Well. As part of our deep and long-standing engagement with ASAP, it will be made available to the ASAP community as sponsored content as well as on our YouTube channel and...
Biopharma leaders already understand the industry’s business model has fundamentally shifted. Partnering isn’t an adjunct to internal R&D or a strategic lever pulled selectively. It is the operating model. The work of discovering, developing, and delivering...
Biopharma alliances succeed or fail for reasons that are often misunderstood. Many leaders still assume that partner selection, strategic fit, or agreement quality determine performance. These factors matter, but they do not explain why alliances with similar science,...
In today’s biopharma landscape, complexity is the constant. Portfolios are expanding—not just in size, but in diversity. Collaborations span research to commercialization, startups to multinationals, and molecules to digital platforms. Meanwhile, tightening budgets,...
The biopharmaceutical environment is defined by uncertainty and turbulence. Indiscriminate and sudden cancellation of research grants, workforce contractions, shifting regulatory and policy landscapes, and supply chain instability have become the new reality. Add...
We certainly aren’t clairvoyant, although we have a crystal ball that sits on a shelf in our library. If you try to look through it, what you see is pretty murky. To the contrary, we believe the future for alliance management is coming into focus. Collaboration is the...
Many companies rely on partnering today for significant portions of pipeline and revenue. Here’s how they can get better at it. Across the biopharma industry, we see that an increasingly diverse ecosystem of organizations are involved in identifying new drug...
We’ve made the point that companies today need an organizational partnering capability just as they need a financial or talent development capability. To know the contours of what that capability needs to be, look to the company’s partnering strategy. Every company...
The March 28, 2024 ASAP Webinar shared the journey savvy alliance leaders are taking to evolve their practices from a standalone function to an organizational capability. This evolution in impact and influence is essential, given that partnering is central today to...
Partnering and alliances are easy! Two or more companies decide they want to do something together and they just do it. Right? Not really. Because alliances combine the different strategies, structures, cultures, and processes of the partners, it takes skill and...
Alliance Management Practices
Announcing Partnering on the Edge: The Hard Work of Partnering Well
We’re launching a video series: Partnering on the Edge: The Hard Work of Partnering Well. As part of our deep and long-standing engagement with ASAP, it will be made available to the ASAP community as sponsored content as well as on our YouTube channel and...
When Strategy Misaligns: A Leadership Playbook for Protecting Value in High-Stakes Biopharma Alliances
Strategic misalignment is not a rare disruption in biopharmaceutical alliances—it is an expected outcome of operating in a dynamic, interdependent industry. It is an inevitability, driven by shifting portfolios, leadership turnover, scientific advances, and external...
A Spotlight on Maximizing Alliance Value Realization
Alliances have long been a core strategy of biopharmaceutical companies. From early-stage biotech discovery partnerships to global codevelopment and cocommercialization pacts, these collaborations create value for the partners by accelerating drug development,...
Alliance Management Skills
Upcoming Presentations Highlight the Alliance Leader’s Evolving Mandate
September features both an online presentation and the ASAP Summit London. Our focus is on the alliance leader’s evolving mandate to maximize value capture from their alliances. On September 9, we will be leading an online program incorporating roundtable discussions...
Reimagining Stakeholder Engagement: Creating Value and Driving Impact
Historically, alliance professionals have faced challenges engaging senior executives effectively. Too often, interactions center on routine updates rather than forward-looking, strategic discussions. At the 2025 ASAP Summit in Denver, Jan Twombly shared techniques to...
See You in London – or Boston – to Hone Your Alliance Management Skills
The Rhythm of Business is proud to once again sponsor ASAP’s European Summit in London 17-19 September and the ASAP Biopharma Conference in Boston November 4 – 6. The European Summit is a cross-industry even that has quickly become the leading European conference on...
Collaboration
A Strategic Imperative: The Collaborative Capability of Biopharma Leadership
The biopharma industry’s business model now depends structurally and irreversibly on multi-party execution. Scientific, regulatory, political, and commercial conditions have converged to create unprecedented interdependence. Modalities are more diverse. Clinical...
A Spotlight on Maximizing Alliance Value Realization
Alliances have long been a core strategy of biopharmaceutical companies. From early-stage biotech discovery partnerships to global codevelopment and cocommercialization pacts, these collaborations create value for the partners by accelerating drug development,...
Reimagining Stakeholder Engagement: Creating Value and Driving Impact
Historically, alliance professionals have faced challenges engaging senior executives effectively. Too often, interactions center on routine updates rather than forward-looking, strategic discussions. At the 2025 ASAP Summit in Denver, Jan Twombly shared techniques to...
News and Events
Announcing Partnering on the Edge: The Hard Work of Partnering Well
We’re launching a video series: Partnering on the Edge: The Hard Work of Partnering Well. As part of our deep and long-standing engagement with ASAP, it will be made available to the ASAP community as sponsored content as well as on our YouTube channel and...
Upcoming Presentations Highlight the Alliance Leader’s Evolving Mandate
September features both an online presentation and the ASAP Summit London. Our focus is on the alliance leader’s evolving mandate to maximize value capture from their alliances. On September 9, we will be leading an online program incorporating roundtable discussions...
Upcoming Conference Presentations Highlight Alliance Performance
Spring conference season is here and The Rhythm of Business is once again pleased to be sponsoring and speaking at two events focused on advancing the profession of alliance management. Jan Twombly will be sharing some of our recent work at two upcoming conferences,...
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