Tag Archives: biopharma

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 →

Biopharma should choose targets using a baseball-style draft

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

I was sitting around last evening checking out how the end of my fantasy baseball season is working out (for the record, first out of ten in one league and fourth in the league I wrote about here) and I starting thinking again about the parallels between baseball and drug development (which I previously wrote about here and here for example, and also Stewart Lyman has a nice piece on a similar theme here). And it hit me that there’s another way in which biopharma could take a  page from baseball: fantasy and Major League Baseball both.

Biopharma could institute a draft for drug targets.  And to explore this I’m going to employ the time-honored, not to mention trite and artificial, format of a series of questions and answers.

Continue reading →

Batman, Blockbusters, and Biopharma

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

This blogging thing is interesting.  I’m discovering one of the challenges with blogging on a regular basis is the back and forth tidal pull between length/quality and speed/relevance.  There are measured, thought-out, lengthy pieces I’m working on about things and concepts I am interested in exploring.  But at the same time I find myself responding to current events that spark a thought and connection, an Aha! moment, with quick reaction pieces.  Finding that balance is tough, especially since I like both kinds of writing and think they add to the general blog environment that I’m trying to create.  And time is limited.  In a given week I shoot for maybe 3+ posts, in an effort not to get too burnt out or disenchanted in the way described by Chuq van Rospach.  Sometimes, though, a combination of thoughts, articles and other bits of information come together and I find myself staying up to pound out those 500 or 1000 words to capture an idea in the moment.  All for the benefit of the 3 or so people who will skim this post, plus the random butt-click registered by some poodle sitting on an iPad.

But whatever.

So, Batman. Continue reading →

Do Biopharma workers hate their jobs? Answer, I don’t think so, but…

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

A colleague of mine when I worked for Merck used to drop by my office to discuss project management, and one of his favorite terms was “engagement.”  I was reminded of this when the people at Gallup published their most recent results about their polling of the American workplace.  You can find their report here, and a writeup here.  One of the interesting/sad findings was that only 30% of their survey respondents (and there were 25 million respondents) report being engaged in their work.  This astounds me.

One of the many perks of science is that far more than 30% of the people I work with on a daily basis are very engaged in what they do.  By engaged, let me refer to the Gallup report:  “Gallup defines “engaged” employees as those who are involved in, enthusiastic about, and committed to their work and contribute to their organization in a positive manner.”  Sounds like a good working definition.  There are a number of reasons to go into science, but rarely do I find people saying they’re doing it for the money.   Probably because that just doesn’t compute when you say it out loud. Continue reading →

Are Biopharma reagent companies sitting on a pile of gold (or at least poptarts)?

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

The recent news about the United States Government monitoring a great deal of both general and specific electronic data has had one beneficial outcome (or at least, one I feel is beneficial):  it has made more people aware of what can actually be done with data, and also that we’re leaving massive amounts of personal data out there that can be traced to the behavior of individuals or organizations.  A few months ago, the Seattle Times published an article describing the explosion of big data and how that can be leveraged in so many ways.

This led me to speculate, in a very out-there kind of way, about what kinds of data Biopharma companies produce and whether there’s any hidden value in that.  Now, certainly companies are very careful about communicating information to the outside world.  Contracts with collaborators routinely contain embargo clauses, and presentations and posters are carefully vetted by legal and communications departments.  So companies would appear to be covered there.  But what kinds of data are out there that might be available, maybe not freely, but in potentia, to an interested audience?

Let me digress for a moment about mergers.  Biopharma over the last few years has seen a flurry of merger and acquisition activity.  The big pharma deals, like Pfizer/Wyeth, and Merck/Schering-Plough, have gotten big press, but there has also been a lot of consolidation among reagent suppliers.  To take one example, I’ve shamelessly taken Life Technologies’ merger history off of Wikipedia and condensed it into this table (after the jump): Continue reading →