"Betting the farm and waiting for the next blockbuster is not going to work," sanofi-aventis (NYSE:SNY) CEO Christopher Viehbacher told Forbes Magazine in its most recent issue. With patents expiring on big sellers, all the large pharmaceutical companies have to do something.

Sanofi's collaboration with Regeneron Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:REGN) seems to fit into something Forbes explained about Viehbacher's way of thinking:

... the problem with drugmakers' R&D isn't a lack of money but a failure to exploit innovative thinking. To that end [Viehbacher] is changing the structure of the research labs, from monoliths to smaller units that are either entrepreneurial (racing to develop a drug) or exploratory (looking for new biology to study).

Blockbusters have been harder to come by. Is Viehbacher's solution the way for Sanofi and competitors like Pfizer (NYSE:PFE), Merck (NYSE:MRK), and Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE:BMY) to go?

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