Aside the normal agenda of this Blog

I would like to encourage you to check-out another interesting Blog – www.thebusinessupdater.com . The objective is a little bit aside this Blog – focus is not on a specific line of business, but on business life in general. However I have read many of the articles with great pleasure and think it has some good perspectives on business related topics in general. I can positively recommend the newly published article about using passion to create a competitive advantage.

In my time as a student, I was part of a team conducting an internal analysis to clarify the vision, mission and strategic focus of a smaller Danish software company. The company was not doing well and we identified big differences in the perception of the future strategy between key employees, and a total lack of company vision and mission. The only thing that drove the company was a shared passion for the company and the product[1]. By using in deep qualitative interviews with all employees we identified a possible vision, mission and clarified the strategic focus – this was of course linked to an external evaluation of the competitive environment. Our conclusion was implemented (with some adaptations) and when we contacted the company two years later they could report a growth rate of 40%. A shared passion and an unclear strategy, was changed to a shared vision, mission and a clear company strategy. This made the company able of conducting a turnaround and is now improving both the top- and bottom-line.

A missing strategic outlook is a common problem when a newly started entrepreneur is setting up a business: the passion is there, but many do not take the time to identify the competitive advantage and how the company can be differentiated from competitors. When setting up a new business it’s not enough to have passion and a gut feeling of how to get success. In addition you have to analyze the market and clarify your vision, mission and a strategic focus. All elements are pivotal for success and no one can be left out – unless you are extremely lucky, and luck will only give you a short term of success.

[1] The company was a family owned business. The mom was the CEO, the father was a programmer and the daughter was head of sales. We quickly identified this as part of the problem.

Big Pharma and Academic institutions partnering: “The New Old Trend”

The easy double-digit growth rate is something of the past for Big Pharma and many companies has been forced to cut sales staff, streamline the pipeline and look beyond own boundaries for in-licensing opportunities with blockbuster potential or company acquisitions with a strategic fit[1]. All this to accommodate the threat from generic manufactures when blockbuster drugs are losing patent protection[2]. To paint up an even gloomier picture; FDA did only approve 16 new drugs last year (2007), and is on the pace to approve just 18 this year. The approval rate in 1997 was 39 drugs, and the staggering decrease from 39 approvals to 16 approvals in 2007 is making the future for Pharma pretty bleak.

Big Pharma is always on the look-out for the next blockbuster product and the search is not only focusing on late-stage, but also early-stage candidate. This has created the trend I call: “the new old partnering trend”.

The Old Trend: Big Pharma-academic partnership engaged university researchers for a certain line of research that benefited their projects, and that research was carried out exclusively by the university scientist.

The New Old Trend: The new involvement tend to be more of a team based approach, where university and industry scientists are working together on wide-ranging experiments to advance new drug discovery and stimulate basic research – in hope of more potential blockbusters in the future.

Examples of this New Old Trend are[3]:
GSK entered into a five-year, US$25 million deal with Harvard to support stem-cell research, focusing on heart disease and cancer.
AstraZeneca signed a multi-year collaboration contract with Columbia University to develop novel therapeutics for metabolic diseases.
Pfizer formed a three-year, US$14 million collaboration with four research universities to study the field of diabetes.

To sum it up: Pharma needs to approach the R&D process from another perspective, and one way could be to collaborate with academic institutions, instead of only using them for a certain line of research. But if The New Old Trend should have a reel impact the academic institutions and Big Pharma needs to break down the barriers and start look at the positive benefits of working together – the three mentioned cases could indicate willingness from both sides.

[1] UCB recently refocused and cut workforce by 17%.
[2] The world best selling drug Lipitor (Pfizer) will lose patent protection in all territories over the next 3-4 years. Risperdal (J&J) the 10th best selling drug lost patent protection in EU in 2007.
[3] From:”Big pharma gravitates to the academe”, Financial Times.