Category Archives: Randomness

The fall and rise of the LEGO Kingdom: A review of “Brick by Brick”

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All opinions are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of Novo Nordisk.

When people ask me what I did growing up, they expect me to say “surf.” I know this because when I tell them what I did for fun their next question is always, “What, you didn’t surf?” I didn’t. Still haven’t learned. Instead I did a lot of the things boys all over the US did. I watched TV. I hung out at the mall and at fast food restaurants. And I played with LEGO.

The brick fundamentally hasn’t changed since I was a kid. My son has a bunch and the basic essence is still snapping things together with that satisfying “click,” and the gradual accretion of form and function from individual, generic elements. Kind of like how life evolves, you know? And yet at the same time LEGO has undergone great changes in packaging, themes, toy categories, and target audiences. Today it’s one of the most respected and recognized toy brands in the world. But something I hadn’t realized until reading “Brick by Brick” by David Robertson and Bill Breen is how close LEGO actually came to crashing and burning in the 90s and early aughts, before recovering to once again become a commercial powerhouse.

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The innovators dilemma in biopharma part 3. What would disruption look like?

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All opinions are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of Novo Nordisk.

h/t to @Frank_S_David, @scientre, and the LinkedIn Group Big Ideas in Pharma Innovation and R&D Productivity for links and ideas

Part 1 is here.

Part 2 is here.

In the previous parts to this series I’ve covered both why the biopharma industry is ripe for disruption, and what the markets might be that could support a nascent, potentially disruptive technology until it matures enough to allow it to supplant the current dominant industry players.  In this final part I’d like to ask what disruption would look like and provide some examples of directions and companies that exemplify what are, to my mind, these sorts of disruptive technologies and approaches. With, I might add, the complete and utter knowledge that I’m wrong about who and what specifically will be disruptive! But in any case, before we can identify disruption, it’s worthwhile to ask what are the key elements of biopharma drug development that serve as real bottlenecks to affecting  human health, since these are the elements most likely to provide an avenue for disruption. Continue reading →

Can studies of bosses help us figure out how good sports managers are?

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All opinions are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of Novo Nordisk.

The world would be a simpler place, although maybe a much more boring and predictable one, if every aspect of performance could be measured directly. My completely unoriginal thought here is that one of the reasons sports appeal to so many people is because they provide clarity. In a confusing, complex world where the NSA is sucking up our information like a Dyson vacuum sucks feathers in a henhouse, and we’re told this is for our own good, clarity can be refreshing.

The simple view of an athlete’s performance is that all the accolades (or jeers), all the milestones (or flops), all the accumulated statistical totals (or lack thereof) are because of that athlete’s ability: his or her drive, passion, training, and natural ability. And that performance is measured via the statistics each sport collects and chooses to honor and promote. Performance is right there, what more do you need? What more could you want? Continue reading →

The Aussie pipeline to the slopes of British Columbia

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All opinions are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of Novo Nordisk

So this past Christmas, I decided to go downhill skiing.  I’ve gotten away from the sport for a few years, and felt it was time for a reintroduction. The slopes are full of older skiers, so I know skiing is something I should be able to keep doing for a good while longer, as long as I don’t get too rusty. Also as long as my knees hold out. And to get back into it I figured a trip to Silver Star in British Columbia would be ideal. I last visited this ski area over ten years ago, but remembered being very impressed by the slopes, the snow, the people and the facilities.

I booked a trip and that was my first hint of an Aussie connection.  Everyone I spoke to on the phone had that distinctive twang that’s mangled in so many Outback Steakhouse commercials.  When I arrived on the 21st of December, almost every Silver Star employee I met had come from Down Under. Continue reading →

The Innovator’s Dilemma in biopharma part 1. Framing the industry’s position

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All opinions are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of Novo Nordisk

h/t to @Frank_S_David, @scientre, and the LinkedIn Group Big Ideas in Pharma Innovation and R&D Productivity for links and ideas

Joe Nocera’s recent column in the New York Times provided a nice dissection of how Blackberry tumbled from the position it once held at the top of the handheld phone/PDA business market.  In a nutshell it encapsulates how Blackberry fell victim to the Innovator’s Dilemma, the paradigm put forward by Clay Christensen about how and why established companies within an industry often fall victim to disruptive technologies.  This happened even though they were aware of the danger and made efforts to circumvent the dilemma.  In the case of Blackberry, one aspect of their fall was a lack of appreciation for the technology creeping up behind: the iPhone and other mobile devices using touchscreens.  For Blackberry one of their advantages and selling points was a physical keyboard which allowed rapid typing and emailing by business customers.  They couldn’t see why anyone would want something less effective for emails and messaging.

In addition, Blackberry felt both secure in and beholden to their customer base, the businesspeople who used Blackberries strictly as tools for work.  Blackberry (Research in Motion at the time) seemed both unable to conceive of the possibility of other markets and, frankly, had no incentive to reach into those markets until it was too late.  By then other phones and operating systems had grown and matured to the point of essentially overtaking the market of smartphone users, of which businesspeople make up just a small fraction.  Too little, too late, and now Blackberry has been trying to sell itself, although recent reports suggest that strategy is also failing.

From Blackberry to biopharma

In this post I’d like to explore the concept of the Innovator’s Dilemma as it might apply to the biopharmaceuticals industry.  Continue reading →