Elliott Sigal made an appearance at the Windhover Strategic Alliance conference yesterday in lower Manhattan and told the crowd that mimicking biotech is a pretty good idea. In fact, he thinks the idea of finding a good partner can be applied to just about anything these days, simply because big pharma really needs to change.

“We need a new business model, an evolving business model, and R&D needs to evolve in that direction,” Sigal said, according to Windhover’s In Vivo Blog. “You’re never too big that you can’t benefit from a good collaboration.” And you may recall Bristol has done just that with Pfizer and AstraZeneca this year.

“Picking the right partner is the best of biotech,” he continued, The WSJ Health Blog reported. “In development, shouldn’t an R&D chief think about a co-development opportunity and a co-commercialization opportunity? Make a big product even bigger, discharge some of the risk, and use some of the resources that would otherwise be crowded out…to invest in other opportunities…You do not have to be a fully integrated company to be successful. Where can we outsource?”

Merck’s Dick Clark was also there, by the way…

…As expected, he downplayed the drugmaker’s recent accomplishments. “Merck has not declared victory yet,” The Star-Ledger of New Jersey reported. “We’ve had some great successes, but we still have a lot of work to do. We may never get (to victory). We may always be in a process of continuous improvement.”