Company: Biogen Idec ($BIIB)
Based: Weston, MA
R&D budget: $1.25B (€930M)
Change from 2009: -2.7%
Net sales spent on R&D: 26.5%

George Scangos wasn't brought in as CEO of Biogen Idec last year to maintain the status quo. The company hadn't had a new drug launch in six years and activist investor Carl Icahn made a fortune combating the previous management team before gaining sway. One of Scangos' first actions when he arrived was to take a close look at R&D.

"We're a mile wide and an inch deep," Scangos told analysts.

So, late last year, Scangos scrapped 11 programs and laid off 650 people. The next step was to deepen the biotech's pipeline where it's focused. That was evident recently when Biogen paid Portola $45 million upfront and promised more than a half billion dollars in milestones for a portfolio of oral Syk inhibitors, with a particular interest in rheumatoid arthritis and lupus.

But its best pipeline news deals with some strong Phase III results from its top late-stage legacy program on BG-12, an experimental MS drug that recently proved it could handily beat out Teva's Copaxone.

Biogen has also been spread out geographically, with its Weston campus a long way from the R&D complex in Cambridge, MA. That distance never sat well with Scangos, who was always known for his hands-on approach to R&D while CEO of Exelixis. But with the wind at his back and the data looking good, Scangos recently decided to bring it all back together in Cambridge.

When things are going your way, you get to set the place as well as the pace.