Case Study Bicoll

The Bicoll case concerns the first Sino-German biotech company Bicoll group, located in Munich, Germany and Shanghai, China. Below, an introduction of the company, kindly provided by the Bicoll Group, is followed by an extensive interview between the author of this report (Q) and Dr. Kai Lamottke (KL), Managing Director of Bicoll and Dr. Heinrich Arnold (HA), Head of Business Affairs of Bicoll. In this interview, Bicoll tells us about its rationale behind setting up the company simultaneously in Germany and China, the scope of its business activities in China, the role of its German company, important factors in establishing the Chinese company and the key issue of building up robust personal relationships. In addition, Bicoll shares with us its experience in managing the company across continents, insight in doing business in another cultural environment, intellectual property (IP) protection issues in China, observations and thoughts of the Chinese biotech industry and Bicoll’s networking activities with Chinese companies. At the end of the interview, Dr. Arnold comments on the likely upcoming trend of relocating research from the Western countries to China and what that would mean for the Chinese biotech companies as well as the Western companies.