R&D strategy

A client wanted to understand what the potential lead indications would be best suited to prove the therapeutic value of its immune regulatory platform.

Alcimed conducted an analysis of the state-of-the-science, helped prioritize potential therapeutic cellular targets to place into R&D to regulate complement fixation both when it creates or prevents disease, and recommended potential academic and private research labs to collaborate with as part of the client’s R&D strategy and capability requirements roadmap.

An innovative biotech companies asked for our help to strengthen its pipeline evaluation process, to be more robust, systematic and reproductible across its current and future drug development programs, as well as more specific to its strategic vision, culture, and organization.

After aligning the executive team around a common vision of the process need, Alcimed brought inspirational benchmarks and led the collaborative building of a new process of stage-gated evaluation and decision-making of its existing and future pipeline.

The R&D portfolio strategy team of a pharmaceutical company needed help to lead its choice of the next diseases to invest research & development for, based on a first high-level landscaping of five markets of interest (high medical unmet need).

Alcimed reconstructed such landscapes by analyzing critical industry parameters (epidemiology, unmet need, competition now and in development, etc.) and in the end gave a go/no-go, prioritization and “how to” recommendation.

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.

Our client, a public institution in the healthcare sector, wanted to define its ambition in terms of AI for its R&D activities, as well as the best means of implementing it.

Capitalising on an initial mapping exercise, we defined the internal needs of the various R&D teams and the potential applications of AI in their activities. We then investigated a wide range of existing technological solutions, to identify those that could meet the needs identified and that were accessible in terms of cost and ease of implementation. The most relevant potential partners for their implementation were also identified and prioritised.

Finally, Alcimed supported this public institution in the construction of a clear roadmap for the implementation of the priority solutions.

Our team helped a research institute in the materials sector to structure its scientific roadmap by understanding the technological, economic, societal and regulatory trends impacting R&D&I in this sector.

Alcimed carried out a strategic foresight analysis to define the main cross-cutting trends impacting materials research in the future and identified the 40 trends impacting R&D&I in the sector. These trends were prioritised on the basis of their cross-disciplinary nature and impact. This strategic analysis provided input for the Institute’s scientific roadmap.

Finally, Alcimed also consolidated a collection of best practices for the renewal of a label promoting access to funding.

In the context of the objectives of carbon neutrality by 2050, our team assisted a car manufacturer’s R&D team to analyse the strategies adopted by European cities to achieve carbon neutrality.

This involved an in-depth analysis of the main trends observed in the hundred or so cities selected by the EU as part of the ‘Smart and Carbon Neutral Cities’ Mission. We explored the various initiatives, whether technological, methodological, partnership-based or regulatory, that have already been put in place or are in the pipeline on the theme of climate and digitalisation.

As a result, our client was able to gain an overall understanding of the emerging trends around smart cities and the most innovative initiatives being implemented by European cities to achieve their carbon neutrality objectives, and thus adapt its research and development strategy on the continent.

One of our clients in the field of aeronautics, space and defense, wanted to unite its R&D teams around the subject of biomimicry and generate new avenues of exploration through this field. To do this, our team followed a four-step process:

1. We first defined key functionalities on which the biomimetic approach could have a contribution in the context of our client.
2. We identified inspiring biomimetic case studies on these functionalities.
3. We organized a creativity workshop to bring out ideas and avenues for reflection on biomimicry.
4. We finally analyzed and prioritized all the ideas generated in order to select the most relevant and promising ones.

Our project allowed our client to enrich their R&D roadmap with many new ideas!