Corporate Incubation: Big Pharma's Bold Move

I've been meaning to write about this for a few months now, but the news this week about GlaxoSmithKline's cutbacks in internal R&D (I'll post something about this later in the week) brought me back to a March 2008 piece in Nature Biotechnology about the establishment of corporate biotech incubators at Biogen and Pfizer. (Nature Biotechnology, "Start-ups weigh benefits of corporate incubators", March 2008)

Does Corporate Venture Investing Work?

One of my clients is a large global company trying to beef up its ability to source core innovations that go beyond new combinations and packaging - basic science and technology that will help it deliver new value over a sustained period.

Opening up their innovation process is clearly an important step, and as we have explored many of the potential vehicles for building a more networked R&D model, the idea of a venture investing fund has moved to the forefront of my thinking. If, as open innovation holds, many of the best ideas are outside the company, I can't think of a more aggressive way to scan, secure and inject them into an existing company.

But as the Wall Street Journal reports on Google's efforts in the area, corporate venture funds have a lot of inherent problems and a mixed record.