This morning the ILSI-BioMed Week 2010 has finally been launched, with 7,000 anticipated participants that will take part in lectures and meetings with the experts and seniors of the bio-pharma and medical equipment industry in Israel and abroad.

Following the opening words of the event’s organizers, ILSI and Kenes, the president of Israel Shimon Peres came up to the stage and surveyed the future of Israel, which will be based on advanced technologies and serve as an example to the entire world. In his own words, “Israel should become an international lab.” Amen to that.

Neither did the following opening keynote lecture disappoint. Sanofi-Aventis, the multinational pharmaceutical company and the world’s fourth-largest by prescription sales, has presented its new view of developing new products. The lecturer divided the pharmaceutical market into two distinct sections: the small biotechnology companies, and the large business companies. The first kind is usually headed by innovative and creative scientists whose expertise is thinking outside the box. They have good ideas, but they lack the experience needed to break through in the market. That’s what the big pharma companies do exceptionally well: they have all the experience and knowledge needed to succeed in the market, but they lack the ground-breaking minds that can be found in the smaller companies.

The solution, according to Sanofi-Aventis, lies in collaboration. Well, that didn’t require a genius to figure out. Then again, such a collaboration is not easily brought about. On the one hand, the employees of the large companies view themselves as superior to those from the smaller companies. On the other hand, the scientists in the small companies treat their projects as their own personal babies, and refuse to accept criticism and ideas for change. All the same, Sanofi-Aventis is determined to bring about fruitful collaborations between the Davids and the Goliaths of the world. To that purpose, they have cut down their portfolio by 40%, and rewired all the human resources and money that became available into new projects, with a core of efficient and competent employees who collaborate with a variety of other companies.

The end result: since 2010, sixty percent of the compounds in Sanofi-Aventis’ portfolio are developed via collaborations. Such collaborations can also promote projects that integrate knowledge and expertise from different fields, such as glucose sensors connected directly to an insulin pump, or robotic hands that connect to the nervous system.

Let us all hope that this trend – collaboration in place of a take-over – will become more common, and will bring about the development of novel technologies and products more efficiently and in a shorter amount of time.