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Drug development is a long and costly process which suffers from the major shortcoming that frequently failure is often onlydetermined during the final stage. Recently, it has been recognised that more care needs to be taken during the early stagesof development to avoid going into lengthy and costly confirmatory studies with ineffective or harmful treatments. To achievethis goal it is essential to implement efficient methods for the design and analysis of such early development studies. Theexpertise in this area is, however, limited at the moment and adequate methodology is only partially available. Using across-sectorial, transnational approach, the IDEAS network brings together leading public and private sector researchers inthe field with ample experience in training to educate, promote and support the future leaders in medical statistics in generaland in the design and analysis of early developmental studies in particular.Within the network, cross-sectorial, transnational teams will support young researchers with individual methodologicalprojects and devise an individually tailored training programme for them. Clinical advisors supplement the input of thesupervisory team and ensure practical relevance and uptake of the methods devised. The training activities are comprised ofa well-rounded mix of specialist, methodological components and generic, transferable skills. A mandatory set of networkwidetraining activities is supplemented by individual training components and cross-sectorial secondments, and particularattention is given to interaction and collaboration between researchers and supervisors across public and private sectorpartners. At the end of their training the researchers will be uniquely qualified with expertise in the field, benefit fromexperience in both public and private sector and can rely on a wide network of experts in the field in the future.