Genzyme was founded as a biotech firm in 1981 by a group of scientists. The firm adopted a niche strategy, concentrating on developing drugs for patients with rare enzyme-related diseases. This represented a relatively small market (thousands of patients) as compared to the large markets targeted by bigger pharmaceutical firms that made drugs for patients with more common diseases (hundreds of thousands of patients). This move was considered risky especially since it can take 10-14 years and cost an average of $800 M to perform the research, run the clinical trials, get FDA approvals ad bring a drug to market.

  Very early on, CEO Termeer and his management team decided not to collaborate with bigger pharmaceutical firms. At the time, most biotech firms would license their technologies to large pharmaceutical firms to tap the larger company’s greater capital resources, manufacturing facilities and marketing and distribution assets.  However, CEO Temeer maintained that the firm remain independent, so that they could keep all the profits.