The importance of collaborative innovation
Innovation in the living world is, by nature, collective. The complexity of today’s challenges has always required large groups, public authorities, universities, start-up and biotechs to work hand in hand. An initiative such as the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI)1 illustrates the vitality of partnership-driven innovation today.
And while collaborative dynamics continue, methods are evolving: in the era of artificial intelligence and Big Data, emerging players are shaping new forms of collaboration and extending them to new geographies.
A new geography of innovation
To ensure effectiveness, partnership logics are increasingly accompanied by clustering. It densifies the supply and demand of technologies, ideas and talents; brings together companies and funding; and fosters complementarity and innovation at global scale.
Today, regions such as Boston, London, the Bay Area or Paris concentrate innovation capacity. They must nevertheless contend with extremely dynamic competing hubs, particularly in Asia. The Korea Biotech2 is part of the Korean scientific ecosystem’s dynamism, while China is consolidating its status as a sector giant and, for example, aims to transform the former city of Suzhou into a “Pharma Valley of China”3 by 2030.
Clustering also facilitates cooperation between players of different sizes and statuses. The relationship with start-ups remains a fundamental lever of innovation for the pharmaceutical industry. The opening of the Spartners by Servier & BioLabs incubator on the Saclay plateau in 2023 illustrates the support a large group can bring to entrepreneurs. At another scale, collaborations with “Big Techs” are more topical than ever, notably to accelerate the deployment of AI in the development of therapeutic solutions.
More than 60
The Servier Group has more than 60 partnerships and research collaborations in 2024/2025 and a network of more than 300 academic and industrial partners worldwide.
Tectonics of practices and expectations
This evolution of the pharmaceutical innovation landscape goes hand in hand with new collaboration models. AlphaFold, born from a collaboration between Google DeepMind and Isomorphic Labs, makes strong promises4 by putting AI at the service of shortening the pharmaceutical R&D pipeline. While medical expectations are immense (identifying therapeutic targets, reducing development times), questions remain regarding data governance and laboratories’ ability to avoid “disintermediation”5, being bypassed by tech giants.
In 2024, 85% of new active substances (NAS) launched come from emerging biopharmaceutical companies (EBPs), versus 53% between 2015 and 2019.
Whether it comes from technological progress or new forms of collaboration, the wave of innovation promised by the pharmaceutical industry also reinforces a phenomenon of asynchrony between the time of innovation and the time of regulation. In countries such as Spain, now Europe’s leader in clinical trials6, measures have been implemented to reduce these time gaps: shorter authorization timelines, simplified procedures, increased administrative harmonization, support for public-private partnerships, etc.
Finally, patients’ new expectations condition innovation effort and challenge protocol standardization. Precision medicine, increased patient participation and the development of decentralized clinical trials (partly carried out at patients’ homes) profoundly transform the way new therapeutic solutions are created. Beyond the medicine, “Beyond the pill” logics—fundamental at Servier— embody an effort of more global innovation, beyond the medicine itself.
Pharmaceutical companies, catalysts of innovation
In this kaleidoscopic landscape, pharmaceutical companies play a central role but can no longer innovate alone. They contribute to financing innovation for young start-ups in a biotech market that has grown by 80%7 in 15 years. They bring industrial expertise into technological partnerships that have become essential and open up to new models of open cooperation, seizing innovative opportunities while fostering cross-cutting collaboration between the scientific ecosystem, biotechs and traditional players.
A little reading: “External innovation: Biopharma dealmaking to boost R&D productivity”
This McKinsey study8 shows that the ability of pharmaceutical companies to source innovation externally is associated with better performance. Companies that practice increased outsourcing are found to be three to eight times more productive than others. More broadly, the study shows that since 2018, 70% of revenues linked to new molecular entities (NMEs) come from external sources.
[1] The Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) is an initiative of the European Commission (DG RTD) and the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA) aiming to improve the competitive situation of the European Union in pharmaceutical research.
[2] BioSpectrum Asia – Analysis – The rise of K-biotech, specialist article.
[3] South China Morning Post – China’s biotech hub Suzhou thriving: can it become next Boston?, current affairs article.
[4] The Rockefeller University – AI could accelerate drug discovery, but only if we can trust it, scientific/institutional article.
[5] CNRS / DUMAS – University scientific deposit (thesis/report).
[6] In English – Spain overtakes Germany as Europe’s leader in clinical trials, current affairs article.
[7] Consultor.fr – Why Big Pharma prefers acquiring research, analysis article.
[8] McKinsey – External Innovation: biopharma dealmaking to boost R&D productivity.