In terms of models that can be used - in the GSK/Sanofi partnership the companies have set up a Joint Collaboration Task Force, co-chaired by the heads of both vaccines businesses. The taskforce will seek to mobilise resources from both companies to look for every opportunity to accelerate the development of the candidate vaccine.
A2:
One thing we’ve learned over more than 20 years of experience in the RBM Partnership – one of the earliest global PPPs with constituencies including malaria-affected countries, donor countries and foundations, multi-laterals, civil society, academia & the private sector – is that it takes time and a common language to build trust among disparate sectors.
That’s why it’s so critical that well-established PPPs like RBM GF are pivoting rapidly to confront the Covid-19 pandemic. In many malaria-endemic countries, disease surveillance teams and significant frontline health capacity are concentrated in malaria programs. Partner Committees already exist and are quickly and proactively supporting countries to adapt their activities to get in front of Covid-19. The new workstreams cover everything from a ground level check in country by country to adapt campaigns and set up an early warning system for funding gaps to a global level, igniting partners who can develop a consensus approach and advocate on a macro-economic level for debt relief.
The longstanding partnership infrastructure is proving to be adaptive in this crisis.
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Darian, from what you see, which steps are organizations skipping in your recommended process? I assume there is less research and analysis now, and just a really pragmatic approach.
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Rapid partnerships can happen through linking with already partnered organisations at fastest pace which erases the necessary steps for new paperwork and can be done through email and social media channels. Now we are seeing new partnerships and collaborations happening in days or hours.
A speedily-built partnership is liable to fall apart unless it has very strong common bond of trust which might come from a sense of urgent common need or from previous interaction. Top leaders of each party would need to directly interact early on to authorise and start the partnership development process.
A2: In our experience at Withers & Rogers, it traditionally take some time for different parties to come to an agreement on how the parties can use each other’s technology/intellectual property and who owns anything developed together. Currently, in order to speed up this process, organisations and companies are being much more flexible in this area.
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I would like to repeat my earlier question of rapid market assessment, and integrated planning and leveraging the resources and expertise
Prepare, Partner and Pioneer model can be an example for managing collaborative innovation.
I totally agree Darian, there is a danger of rushing things through. Which is fine for short-term partnership only related to the current pandemic, but if we want the relationship to last longer then some steps will probably need to be gone through when things are calmer. I am using the partnering framework in my work with ILRI and trying to embed good partnering principles
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In the face of the emergency, partnerships have been able to fast track the partnering process and bypass the usual internal procedures, and just get going.
Looking at the building blocks, firstly about trust. Well, it helps to have pre-existing relationships. DFID and Unilever’s £100M handwashing partnership builds on many years working together, for example.
However, the urgency and peril of the crisis, and the fact it’s a common threat to all - means either that we just assume a much higher level of trust, or with our fates so intertwined, we just go ahead and get on with it, assuming that everyone will act appropriately for the common interest. Trust is no longer important.
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Hi Christina, thanks for your question. I just posted a few examples on how we are supporting small businesses with new e-commerce platforms, micro-finance. Also new product portfolio expanding our Non-Alcohol Beers and new occasions of consumption.
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In terms of how we can set up partenrships so rapidly - the COVID-19 pandemic is unprecedented in its global impact, and this prioritises resources in both companies and regulators to have a laser focus on what it takes to move quickly. This way of working is likely not replicable in non-pandemic times. We believe, however, that we will learn from the work done during the COVID-19 pandemic and that this might enable us to partner with regulators to speed up the vaccine development process in the future – as vaccine timelines are very long today (at least a decade, often longer).
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@Hannah_Green I saw that this Task Forces is co-chaired by your vaccines leadership. Is it critical to have top management involved to speed up?
This pledge https://www.cof.org/news/call-action-philanthropys-commitment-during-covid-19 has been signed by more than 650 Foundations worldwide committing them to fast-track processes through this crisis – a great example of rapid action
As this is a state of emergency, paperwork and litigation should be minimalized as this only consumes time
Another element is around the alignment of interests between partners, something that often takes a long time to negotiate.
The crisis suspends normal business and in these crisis times, every organisation’s objectives widen to include survival and supporting their societies. There’s no problem finding an alignment of interest here.
External common threat certainly builds group cohesion.
Our culture at AB InBev is built on 10 principles with our people as our greatest strength, setting always stretch targets and never completely satisfied with our results. This is one of the reasons we deliver solutions and adapt to changing realities rapidly and use methodologies like Agile-Scrum to implement projects in record time through cross-functional partnerships internally and external with governments, multilateral organizations, NGOS and communities.
Every project we develop is tracked by an owner, that set up daily management routines and controls progress through PMO dashboards aligned with SMART objectives initially defined.
It is critical to define clear ways of working and processes, with clear roles and responsibilities of all partners involve delivering fast results.
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So far we’ve seen 3 basic models: individual lead, collaborative alliance and innovation platforms. In the first, one organization leads and is supported by others. For example, Microsoft has made computing capability available to immunotherapy startups ImmunityBio. Combining massive amounts of graphics processing power meant that a model of the spike protein of the Covid-19 virus was available within just days, instead of the months it would have taken previously.
Collaborative alliances pool complementary capabilities of two or more organizations. For example, Apple and Google will both have to align and upgrade their existing operating systems to interact for the tracing apps. Sanofi and GSK provide different parts of a potential vaccine solution. Vodafone has smart phone data and the University of Southampton modelling capacity.
Hackathons and innovation challenges create a platform to crowdsource innovation. These platforms can be hosted by one or several players. Roche Canada launched a Covid19 Open Innovation Challenge in Canada to identify and support promising solutions to Covid-19 related challenges. It generated over 800 high quality submissions over 2 weeks. Hackster.io, an open-source technology company, and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) have partnered to launch the “COVID-19 Detect and Protect Challenge” to create open-source technology that developing countries can leverage in the fight against this global pandemic.
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I agree. It is always good to have a conversation at the start as to how the project might progress and to think about what will happen down the line.
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