Challenge the assumptions
Large companies are not uniformly bureaucratic, and small companies are not uniformly undisciplined. Such shortcuts can damage trust before teams have a chance to learn how their partners actually work.
Build collaboration deliberately
Address unknowns, establish objective program leadership, invest in relationships, communicate across the full team, and involve people early in planning. These practices create a route for reconciling different company goals with shared program commitments. The source illustrates the approach through a biotech–pharma alliance that brought a therapy to market quickly. Its management lesson is to replace assumptions about size or culture with direct understanding and a practical operating structure.