In this recent Wall Street Journal article, emanating from their weekly “Theory and Practice” installment on people and ideas influencing managers, we get a glimpse of the potential partnership model of the future.
“Together, Messrs. McGuire and Langer have launched 13 companies over the past 15 years and become a model for other venture capitalists scrambling to commercialize new drug and medical-device research. Dr. Langer, 59 years old, holds more than 600 patents and supplies the science; Mr. McGuire, 52, fine-tunes the business. Some of Mr. McGuire's work with Mr. Langer was described in a 2005 Harvard Business School case study called, "The Langer Lab: Commercializing Science.".”
“One early big hit came in 1997, when they co-founded, with another Langer protege, Advanced Inhalation Research Inc. The company, which devised a novel way to deliver large-molecule drugs via the lungs, was sold for $113 million in stock 18 months later; Polaris made nearly 10 times its money, and Dr. Langer profited as a significant shareholder of AIR. Since then, the two have teamed up on other drug-related start-ups like Pulmatrix Inc., which is developing inhalable aerosols for respiratory disease, and Tempo Pharmaceuticals Inc., which uses nanotechnology to create new drugs. Of the 13 investments, two companies went public and three were acquired.”
These types of arrangements seem to be a match made in bio-tech heaven, and from a business perspective they definitely make a lot of pragmatic sense, in terms of supplying “deal flow” and a reduced risk-premium for the investors involved.
Perhaps we should not be all that surprised that such partnerships are successful, as by its nature this particular partnership is multi-disciplinary, and spans the boundaries of multiple skill-sets.
Is it possible that we may see the increasing popularity of these types of partnerships in other areas of business?
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120813571182711781.html?mod=djemSB
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