At a time when companies are increasingly relying on alliance dependent strategies as a key driver of growth, competition for the best deals is enticing more and more companies to use flexibility as a currency in the fight to win the `Partner of Choice' crown and get the deal. Flexibility is a valuable currency, but unless the management risks it creates are properly identified, planned for, and managed, it can become the Achilles' heel of an alliance-centric strategy.

Biopharmaceutical companies use flexibility as a currency to get desirable assets. This strategy can backfire if that flexibility and willingness to allow the partner a more collaborative role results in overly complex operational and governance provisions in alliance agreements. By partnering with the alliance managers responsible for implementing the deal, management risks necessarily assumed to get the deal can be identified, planned for, and managed. Flexibility is a valuable currency that must be used wisely if successful deal making is to result in successful alliances.

Alliances have long been a part of company strategy. In many industries, alliances account for more than half of the revenues and facilitate in the introduction of more new products. Within biopharmaceuticals, alliances have become an essential strategic tool as the cost and risk of developing new medicines has increased and the patent cliff looms. This heightened pursuit of new sources of innovation and growth through alliances and other forms of collaboration has magnified competition for deals in industry after industry, resulting in a beauty contest like atmosphere in which each company is positioning itself as the " Partner of Choice." To make themselves more desirable than other contestants, licensing and business development executives are pursuing their partnering efforts by:

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