Last year Roche ($RHHBY) decided to shutter its sprawling research facilities in Nutley, NJ, while leaving its U.S. drug development effort largely in the hands of Genentech (gRED), which has delivered a string of important new medicines for the pharma giant. This year, for example, Genentech is widely expected to gain an approval for the breakthrough cancer drug T-DM1. Now Reed will journey to Basel, where the separate research division's latest headline effort was the spectacular failure of the heart drug dalcetrapib. The outsider will be given the mandate to make the Swiss side of R&D look as productive as the crew at Genentech--no easy task.