ASAP Unveils 2023 Alliance Excellence Award Finalists

While hundreds of alliance management professionals have gathered in Tampa, Fla., to attend this year’s ASAP Global Alliance Summit to discuss what is next for alliance management professionals, the community also took time to look back into the recent past to honor the best-of-the-best in the profession. 

Ard-Pieter de Man, CSAP, PhD, professor of knowledge networks and innovation at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, helped kick off Summit activities by announcing the finalists for the 2023 ASAP Alliance Excellence Awards. De Man, who chaired the awards selection committee, briefly outlined the attributes of the individual alliances and alliance programs that are in the running to take home an award in each of the five categories. 

Here is a rundown of the organizations that have best exemplified how to use alliance management best practices to achieve monumental results:

• Bayer–Hua Medicine – This early-phase drug development alliance beat its targets “multiple times,” according to de Man. “The partner selection process the partners went through was very thorough.”
• Cancer Research Horizons–AstraZeneca – This decade-old antibody research alliance was recognized for its standalone joint research lab and the effective governance structure underpinning the activities that are conducted in it.
• Guidewire – This insurance software vendor’s Partner Connect program represented an innovative, customer-centric approach to partnering with consulting firms.
• Janssen – The pharmaceutical giant was honored twice, first for its account management program, which uses metrics to drastically reduce risk across its alliance portfolio. The company’s second nomination recognizes its investment in racial health equity initiatives across its alliance portfolio.
• Jazz Pharmaceuticals – This biopharmaceutical company’s alliance team “cracked the code” for working remotely with each other and their partner counterparts during the pandemic, according to de Man. The awards committee also honored Jazz’s individual partnership with Pfenex for the way the partners exhibited “open, early and, transparent communication” to resolve issues en route to launching a new acute leukemia product.
• Novo Nordisk–2seventy bio – This gene therapy alliance was one of “great complexity,” as it was actually a multilateral alliance—the two main partners worked with two other companies. The committee was enamored with its use of “stage contracting;” the companies took a leap and showed a great deal of trust in each other by starting their research before their commercial agreement was finalized.
• Protiviti–Microsoft – “I’ve rarely seen [an alliance] driven by corporate strategy as much as this one,” marveled de Man, who lauded this partnership’s “flawless” alignment with corporate strategy and its significant impact on revenue. The partners demonstrated a “full-blown application of best practices” from The ASAP Handbook of Alliance Management: A Practitioner’s Guide.
• Vir – This biotech earned plaudits from de Man for netting great results across its portfolio in a relatively short amount of time in an industry known for lengthy ten-year-plus collaborations.

“One thing we need to do more of is celebrate success,” said Michael Leonetti, CSAP, president and CEO of ASAP, after de Man announced the finalists.

Indeed, that is what we will be doing on May 25 when ASAP hosts a free livestreamed event to announce who the winners, including fireside chats with some of the honorees.