What Are Biotechs Good At?

Biotech companies have seen themselves as proto-drug companies. But the real talents of many of them have little to do with becoming fully integrated discovery-based drug firms. They should be performing core-competency reviews to uncover their real distinctive talents, and then exploiting them--talents which may lie in dealmaking (e.g., only one of Chiron's three main products comes from its internal research), marketing (e.g., perhaps Genentech's best skill is differentiating its drugs from cheaper alternatives), clinical development, or even distribution (a la Axion).