Why Biotech Companies Struggle to Make Cross-Functional Teams Work
Attila Foris
Biotech Strategy & Scale-Up Advisor | Helping Seed–Series A companies become investor-ready, market-ready & built to scale
Biotech startups are built by experts. Scientists, clinical leads, operations specialists, commercial minds.
Individually, these teams are high-performing. Together? Not always.
Cross-functional collaboration sounds like common sense. But in biotech — it's one of the biggest silent killers of momentum after Series A.
Here’s why, and what to do about it.
1. Different timelines → conflicting priorities
Science moves on discovery cycles. Clinical works on regulatory timelines. Commercial pushes for market signals. Ops juggles funding, vendors, and constraints.
They’re not just on different pages — they’re in different books.
So what happens?
Everyone is doing their job. But the org starts to work against itself.
🧠 Solution: Shared strategic roadmap Build one timeline with clear dependencies. Even if teams move at different speeds, they should move in the same direction.
2. Founders become the bridge — and the bottleneck
In early stages, the founder knows everything. They translate between functions. They carry the vision in their head.
But as the team scales, that model breaks.
If the CEO is the only link between science, ops, and commercial — decisions slow down, misunderstandings spike, and trust erodes.
You become the single point of failure.
🧠 Solution: Functional leads must think horizontally Hiring great execs isn’t enough. They need to be incentivized — and expected — to build together, not just in silos.
This shift doesn’t happen by accident. It happens through structure.
3. Misalignment around what “done” means
The scientist says the data is ready. The product person disagrees. The commercial lead says it’s not compelling enough.
Who’s right?
Maybe all of them — or none.
Because without shared definitions, every milestone becomes a debate.
This happens all the time in biotech:
🧠 Solution: Define your success language Before you execute, align on: → What are we doing? → What does “done” look like? → Who decides when we’re there?
This small step kills 90% of cross-functional tension.
4. Lack of context breeds friction
The scientist rolls their eyes at the marketer’s slide. The marketer is frustrated the data isn’t “ready.” The ops lead wonders why the team insists on a more complex solution.
None of it is malicious. It’s just… ignorance.
In biotech, your smartest people often don’t understand each other’s constraints. And when people don’t understand — they assume the worst.
🧠 Solution: Build cross-functional empathy Here’s what actually helps:
You’re not asking people to become experts in another field. You’re helping them see the bigger picture.
5. Leaders wait too long to name the tension
You know there’s a gap between teams. But you assume it’s temporary. You hope it’ll self-correct. You don’t want to “rock the boat.”
So you wait.
But silence doesn’t solve misalignment. It feeds it.
The longer you wait to create cross-functional clarity, the deeper the silos set in.
🧠 Solution: Name the gap — early and often If you’re thinking:
Say something.
Make cross-functional trust a leadership topic — not a cultural wish.
Final thought:
Biotech isn’t just about building incredible science. It’s about building a company that can bring that science to the world — fast, clearly, and repeatedly.
That only happens when your teams move together.
Cross-functional collaboration isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the operating system of a scalable biotech company.
👉 Where have you seen cross-functional tension stall momentum?
#biotech #leadership #teams #scaleup #execution #culture
Custom Biotech & Life Sciences software when SaaS isn’t enough | LIMS & ELN | Co-owner & COO @CodePhusion | Biotech-Focused IT Partner
2moBiotech is usually framed as a “science risk” game, but a lot of the real risk is org design. Teams can have the best data in the world and still stall because no one defines “done.”