PPP in specifically Biotech empirically fails

In the period 1977–2010, about 71% of all research-oriented partnerships in the biotechnology industry failed before the product under development had reached the market [Havenaar and Hiscocks (2012)]. It must be emphasized that only about 46% of failed partnerships were terminated due to unsatisfactory research results, while in about half the cases the problems appeared to be due to inter-organizational relationships. Biotechnology companies, however, have to rely on numerous cooperation partners, in the context of research-oriented as well as other partnerships along the value chain [Hagedoorn and Duysters (2002)]. The company's success is therefore particularly dependent on the capabilities of all the partner companies, the design of the respective partnerships and ultimately on the success of the strategic partnerships [Baum et al. (2000)]. The analysis of factors that explain the success of strategic partnerships in research-intensive industries such as the biotechnology industry can help companies to reduce the high failure rates. Given the importance of strategic partnerships for biotechnology companies, empirically validated success factors can therefore lead to significant efficiency gains. In previous academic work, the investigation of the success factors of interfirm partnerships took place in the context of different theoretical approaches and different industry sectors [Duysters et al. (1999); Gulati (1998); Jiang et al. (2008); Kale and Singh (2007); Pekar and Allio (1994); Taylor (2005); Zollo et al. (2002)]. However, many of the existing works only use a single predominant theoretical approach, or focus on factors that are of relevance at or after the formation of a strategic partnership [Deitz et al. (2010); Mohr and Spekman (1994)]. Frequently no account is taken of the specificities that occur with regard to the measurement of success in partnerships. In addition, there are only a few studies which deal with the characteristics of research-intensive industries and in particular of the biotechnology industry [Al-Laham et al. (2010); Baden-Fuller and Morgan (2010); Baum et al. (2000); Stuart (2000); Zollo et al. (2002)]. From the perspective of the present study, these aspects can be an explanation of why the failure rate for partnerships in the biotechnology industry, despite the many years of scientific investigation of potential success factors, is still unsatisfactorily high. The aim of this study is thus to derive factors from the resource-oriented approach as well as from the relationship-oriented approach and to verify empirically their impact on the success of strategic partnerships in the medical biotechnology industry. The derived factors thus relate to aspects that may be relevant both at and after the formation of the partnership. In summary, we can derive the following research question for this work: What factors influence the success of a strategic partnership in the medical biotechnology industry from the perspective of the resource- and relationship-oriented approach? The study is structured as follows: Chap. 2 deals with the basics of strategic partnerships in research-intensive industries. In this context, structure and aims of strategic partnerships along the value chain of the medical biotechnology industry are described. In Chap. 3, the hypotheses are derived in the light of the existing literature and an appropriate model is formulated. In Chap. 4, the results of the empirical study are presented and discussed. Chapter 5 continues with a summary of the results, making particular reference to the limitations of this work and the need for further research.