The Antibiotics Crisis: Exploring and Maintaining Partnership Models

The case focuses on the antibiotics crisis / antimicrobial resistance, a global health challenge as described by the World Health Organization. It refers to the overuse, or rather the misuse, of antibiotic medications as bad bacteria multiply and take over the good ones. This makes it difficult for current pharmaceutical companies and other medical institutions to develop new drugs and is becoming a serious threat to human life. It can be deemed as a silent pandemic. Currently, the perception is that senior managers at pharmaceutical companies are having a difficult time in finding the best methods to tackle this challenge due to its complex nature. This case follows the decision-making journey of a pharmaceutical company, Evotec, and narrates how the protagonist rises up to the challenges of drug discovery by partnering with other key players (pharmaceuticals, government institutions, education institutions, etc).