Strategy consulting
For more than 30 years, we have been supporting managers in their company’s strategic projects, drawing on our team’s sectoral and functional expertise.
They trust us
How we support our clients in developing their strategies
Founded in 1993, Alcimed is a consulting firm specialized in innovation and new markets development in life sciences. Spread over our 8 offices in the world (in France, Europe, Singapore and the USA), our team of 220 high-level explorers supports everyday decision-makers and business departments (marketing, research, innovation, strategy, CSR, etc.) in their innovation and new market development projects.
We support our clients on subjects as diverse as defining their company’s strategic positioning, drawing up a sales strategy, a target acquisition audit, implementing a CSR strategy, a diversification project, and many others!
And our activities are not limited to strategy development. The diversity of our clients (manufacturers, ETIs, innovative start-ups, institutions, etc.), the subjects we deal with, and the geographical areas we explore, enable us to master a wide range of missions and develop recognized expertise in our specialized sectors.
Our missions
Our expertise
Our missions
Strategic marketing
Clients & Patients
R&D
Commercial strategy
Innovation
New partners
Our expertise
Healthcare
Environment & Climate
Beauty & Nutrition
Energy & mobility
Sovereignty
What they say
"The benefit that really Alcimed brought to the table was to have an expert intermediary to take us through the process to really challenge our thinking."
Mark TWYMAN
Senior VP and Chief Commercial Officer
"Alcimed’s explorers have an excellent level of scientific knowledge. They are empathetic and diplomatic!"
Cornelia FUNK
Head of Marketing Ophthalmology
Examples of strategies carried out for our clients
Concentric diversification strategy for a pharmaceutical player
One of our clients, a global pharmaceutical leader, wanted to secure the position of one of its blockbusters facing an intense competition and to diversify its activities by setting up new associated services for healthcare professionals and patients.
In this project, our team first conducted a phase of identification of potential services via a benchmark of hospital and out-of-hospital healthcare services and a study of the unmet needs of patients and physicians in several countries. After this first phase, we evaluated and selected (according to several criteria co-defined with our client) the most relevant services to develop to diversify its activities.
Once the services were selected, we then defined the product and service offer “packs” and declined them operationally within a dozen of subsidiaries.
Commercial strategy for the launch of a new antibiotic
We supported a leader in the pharmaceutical industry in the development of its commercial strategy and business development plan for the launch of a new antibiotic in 2 key countries: South Africa and Thailand.
Once the project was launched and the context of our client was analyzed, our team first carried out a diagnosis of the situation in each target country (existing supply, market segments, demand mapping, needs and expectations of physicians, purchasing path and decision process, patient pathway, etc.). Following this diagnosis, our exlorers conducted a regulatory analysis to identify approval timelines for such a treatment in each target country.
All the elements gathered during our investigations and our analysis enabled us to co-build with our client each step of the commercial strategy and in particular its business development plan for this new product.
Strategic audit of the activities of a healthcare SME to define its new 5-year roadmap
Our team supported the management committee of an innovative SME in the field of diagnostics in rethinking its 5-year strategy and in building a roadmap to raise funds to support its new development ambition.
To do so, we conducted a strategic audit of our client’s activities worldwide, coupled with a market study in several key geographies.
Our mission led to the co-construction of a 5-year strategic roadmap with our client, which enabled to validate several strategic decisions (discontinuation of some activities, development of others), to embark the internal team towards a new vision built in echo with the market, and to convince potential investors to support the projected growth.
Definition of a new innovation strategy and design of an innovation factory dedicated to digital services
We worked with a major player in the aeronautics industry who wanted to develop new digital services, and who could not afford the very long traditional development times in aeronautics for this kind of innovation race!
Everything had to be created from scratch: the process – from idea generation to prototype development -, the places, the people involved and the way they had to interact with each other, etc. A real innovation factory was born!
We tested the new approach by accompanying the first 3 ideas, and we also developed user guides, training materials and all relevant models, so that our client could now run it alone and efficiently.Strategy to improve the R&D performance of an industrial player
We helped a leading company in the space industry improve its R&D strategy. Our client’s main challenge was to build a reference framework that would enable it to assess the relevance of the projects in its R&D portfolio. It would allow our client to objectively decide which project to pursue or discontinue, and ultimately optimize performance.
We carried out an initial internal phase aimed at understanding the existing R&D process, its pain points and the key criteria to be considered in order to optimize project analysis. We then benchmarked with comparable players (very long product cycles, substantial R&D investment, ….) to understand best practices and pitfalls to avoid in this area.
All the elements gathered enabled us to build a customized reference framework (criteria, an evaluation scale for each criterion, metrics, etc.) integrating the dimensions of strategic fit, business elements, degree of innovation, human aspects, etc.
Commercial strategy to be reviewed following a change of distribution model for a medical device in Russia
We assisted a leading player in the medical device industry in redesigning its commercial strategy for its entire product portfolio in Russia.
Following an internal strategic change, our client needed to rethink its sales approach in Russia from a direct sales approach to an indirect sales approach via distributors. In order to establish its new strategy and define its growth plan, our team explored the Russian hospital market: analysis of supply and demand, understanding of regulatory, purchasing and reimbursement mechanisms, and identification and characterization of potential distribution partners.
The results of our study allowed our client to rethink and decide on its new business strategy and growth plan for the coming years.
Setting up an "innovation lab" to stimulate a culture of innovation
We assisted a leading pharmaceutical company that wanted to bring its teams together around innovation to develop new products, new services, new market access models and new ways of working; all in a special and unique place. We decided to generate this new momentum by imagining the creation of an “innovation laboratory”, a physical place “apart”.
Through an external benchmark and internal workshops with a dedicated project team, we defined its operational functioning and roadmap and then organized the first events taking place in this new laboratory with employees now ready to innovate!
Definition of the strategic positioning of a leading aerospace company in the autonomous vehicle market
The development of autonomous systems has been a strategic aspect for the aeronautics market for several years.
Alcimed assisted the management of an aeronautical equipment manufacturer in the choice of the best strategic positioning for autonomous vehicles. To do so, our team identified current technological developments, carried out a positioning study of direct competitors and other players along the value chain, and assessed its customers’ expectations and level of maturity in terms of autonomy.
Our exploration also looked at the limits from a regulatory and certification point of view to finally define a concrete action plan enabling our client to become a key player in tomorrow’s aviation solutions.
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Founded in 1993, Alcimed is an innovation and new business consulting firm, specializing in innovation driven sectors: life sciences (healthcare, biotech, agrifood), energy, environment, mobility, chemicals, materials, cosmetics, aeronautics, space and defence.
Our purpose? Helping both private and public decision-makers explore and develop their uncharted territories: new technologies, new offers, new geographies, possible futures, and new ways to innovate.
Located across eight offices around the world (France, Europe, Singapore and the United States), our team is made up of 220 highly-qualified, multicultural and passionate explorers, with a blended science/technology and business culture.
Our dream? To build a team of 1,000 explorers, to design tomorrow’s world hand in hand with our clients.
Alcimed carries out consulting missions in a variety of fields and on topics as diverse as the uncharted territories of our clients! Our projects and the methodological approaches we develop are based on the specific needs and contexts of our clients. We for example support our clients in defining their R&D or innovation strategy, in studying their target markets, in identifying and exploring new opportunities, in investigating innovative technologies, in defining their sales and marketing strategies, in integrating CSR or data science into their practices, or in imagining the future of their activities.
We have chosen to operate without using pre-established methodologies. Our consultants always start from the context and from the specific questions of our clients and think about the best way to provide clear answers. Let’s forget methodological approaches of copy-pasting.
We’re not consultants, we’re explorers! Working with a consulting firm like Alcimed means living a different experience, with a team that always favors face-to-face meetings, goes beyond classic deliverables in favor of innovative ones (videos, data visualization tools, websites, collaborative platforms, …), that favors interactive animations in projects (escape games, quizzes, board games, role-playing games, video games, …), and that loves to make clients discover unusual places!
Beyond analyzing the web and literature, and large internal or external data lakes using data science, our consultants target and interact with key stakeholders: these can be clients, suppliers, partners, experts, opinion leaders, end-customers or patients, … and we challenge their viewpoints. This investigative work enables us to build our clear opinion at the crossroads between the viewpoints of the different stakeholders, and leads us to build recommendations to allow our clients to make decisions.
Our team consists of 220 passionate individuals, with degrees from the best international schools and universities , most possessing a dual education in science/technology and business or data science. More than a third of our consultants have an international and multicultural background, and we master more than 20 languages and cultures, including the world’s most widely spoken ones: English, Chinese, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Arabic and Japanese.