This analysis appears to propose that buying-in drug development programs is more financially efficient than developing them in-house. Presumably these bought-in programs are found among smaller biotech companies.

This overview however omits the costs incurred by all those who were not bought-in, i.e. the biotechs funded by VC, etc, who never get bought.

So in terms of the costs of innovation the overall analysis may not support either buying-in or in-house, its just that the risks are differently distributed.

A separate question, and that which appears to have been the foundation of NIBR's erstwhile success, is that in NIBR the scientists and clinicians who innovate new drug candidates remain closely involved in the later stages of drug development. This would be in theory possible with either model, i.e. it would depend more on company culture than the origin of discovery. Acqui-hires that are common in tech for example prioritize continuity of intellectual and technical know-how (as far as I understand it).