Hans Mueller, Nova Pharmaceutical.

• Author: Kristie, James
• Position: President and CEO of Nova Pharmaceutical Corp. - Profile of the Board - Interview

Start-up health care and biotech companies have been at times both criticized and complimented for recruiting "big name" boards of directors in the effort to get launched and established. Skeptics label the practice as mere window dressing to lure in investors.

To discuss the rationale for having a board that, as one might say, is high in name recognition, Directors & Boards visited with Dr. Hans Mueller, President and Chief Executive Officer of Nova Pharmaceutical Corp. Top executives from such companies as PepsiCo, Merck, Allied-Signal, Mobil Oil, Emerson Electric, Armco, and IBM are, or have been, directors of Nova Pharmaceutical since the company went public in 1983. Former U.S. President Gerald Ford retired from the board last year.

Based in Baltimore, Md., Nova Pharmaceutical focuses on new approaches to the treatment of inflammatory conditions, diseases of the central nervous system, and on drug delivery technologies for use in a variety of therapeutic areas. The company employs more than 300 people, including a 165-person research and development team. "We are an exciting little company and we want to make it an exciting big company," says the Swiss-born Mueller, who joined the company in 1985, following a 16-year career with Sandoz Corp. Excerpts from the interview with D&B Editor James Kristie follow.

"In the start-up phase, you need to do two things well. You need to do science well, but you also need to do financing well, because they go hand in hand. The importance of each alternates a bit. Sometimes you are going to push the science more, and sometimes you have to push the financing angle more.

So, you first try to align yourself with top scientists -- which we did with Solomon Snyder -- to get credibility in the scientific community. Then, in order to have credibility in the investment community, it was necessary to put in a board that, in itself, has credibility.

What the founders of the company were looking for were board members who had high name recognition and had good general management experience. Because in those days you couldn't determine what the specific problems facing the company would be, so you didn't look for board members with expertise in a certain field. The founders were looking for generalists with very broad experience.

The third angle was to find people who had experiences in different fields -- scientific people, people from industry, people from government -- so you could cover all the different...