Europe has never lacked scientific excellence. It continues to produce world-class research, respected regulators, leading pharmaceutical companies and some of the world’s most innovative biotechnology businesses.

Yet increasingly, the greatest economic value generated from European science is
realized elsewhere.

This is not because Europe produces weaker science. It is because it controls less of the system that transforms scientific innovation into enterprise value. The first half of 2026 exposed a different question. It is no longer simply where innovation originates. It is where it is financed, developed, validated and commercialized, and where its value is ultimately captured.

The implications reach far beyond strategy. They are shaping the leadership decisions
that boards, investors and management teams must make.

Most commentary on Iran and the Strait of Hormuz starts with oil. That is understandable. It is also where too many biotech and pharma boards stop.

For our sector, this is not mainly an oil story. It is a strategy story. More precisely, it tests whether a business built on global supply chains, controlled logistics, outsourced manufacturing and tightly
managed clinical or launch timetables can still be executed when the price of certainty rises.

With the life sciences industry well into year five of a sustained downturn, one hot topic among leaders is how to survive difficult market conditions. It’s something I’ve thought a lot about as I launched Catalyst Advisors during the onset of the financial crisis in the spring of 2008.

The single most important thing I’ve learned about business resilience is the importance of perspective: learning quickly from mistakes, staying grounded in what matters, and viewing setbacks as opportunities. When things go south, you have to be ready to pivot to make it better: It sounds obvious, but it can be highly challenging to execute in the moment.

For me, over the past 17 years of running Catalyst Advisors, that perspective has been shaped (sometimes the hard way) in three main areas that I’ve found are so critical to the smooth functioning of a company: talent, culture, and strategic agility.

“CCOs will need a level of commercial creativity — or the ability to inspire it — that is greater than the innovation applied to the drug itself.” John Archer, our founder and managing partner, discusses with Roger Longman on BioCentury

“The life sciences industry is on the brink of a significant shift. Over the next few years, a historic patent cliff will reshape Big Pharma’s landscape, triggering waves of talent movement between pharmaceutical and biotech companies. The last time the

Abivax is a clinical-stage biotechnology company focused on developing therapeutics that harness the body’s natural regulatory mechanisms to modulate the immune response in patients with chronic inflammatory diseases. Marc de Garidel, an experienced leader in the biopharma sector, was appointed CEO in 2023 to lead Abivax as it moves towards commercialization of its lead drug candidate, obefazimod, currently tested in phase 3 trials for the treatment of adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis (UC). I recently talked with him about leadership and lessons he has learned over his career.

The Alliance for Regenerative Medicine (ARM) is an international advocacy organization championing the benefits of engineered cell therapies and genetic medicines. Tim Hunt joined ARM as CEO in 2022 with more than 20 years of experience in the biotechnology industry.

Networking is an indispensable part of making our way in the corporate world. But it too often gets a bad reputation. It might stem from the queasy feeling many of us get about the idea of “selling ourselves” or handing

Members of the Catalyst Advisors team attended multiple private, VC-sponsored conferences recently. It was a joy to get back to live, in-person meetings. The presentations sparked some timely ideas, and the hallway encounters led to engaging and open conversations with

After more than 20 years at a large global recruiting firm, I left. I wanted to focus on clients with innovative therapeutics and work in a more collaborative corporate culture. At the big firm, there were 200-plus engagements per year