Boehringer’s Innovation Strategy Does Not Avoid Areas With Heavy Competition

Like many of its large pharma peers, Boehringer Ingelheim likes to talk about its lofty research and development goals and sourcing external innovation to stay on the cutting edge of therapeutic modalities, target discovery and validation, and ways to hit those targets. The German firm sets high standards for best- and/or first-in-class pipeline assets and breakthrough therapy designations.

But as a privately held and family-owned pharmaceutical company, BI has advantages over its peers in terms of being able to take a measured path to drug development without the...