Strategy

Eyes in the Back of Your Head

We all remember the Greek myth about old King Sisyphus. In life, he was a trickster, but the gods got the last laugh in the afterlife by making it his fate to push a huge boulder up a mountain only to see it roll down just before reaching the summit-again and again for all eternity.

Without common reporting standards in place, researchers have little incentive to share data with scientists elsewhere in the company. When researchers don't sharedata on a regular basis, they can begin to feel proprietary about their work-and even less inclined to disclose their results.

Without common reporting standards in place, researchers have little incentive to share data with scientists elsewhere in the company. When researchers don't sharedata on a regular basis, they can begin to feel proprietary about their work-and even less inclined to disclose their results.

Accept distortions and untruths. Don't try to undo them. The point is not to win an argument; your critics' views are legitimate, irreversible realities. It's time to give the public something new to think about.

Pharma trial sponsors and their CROs should enlist the support of high-level executives to make sure designated decision makers are fully confident in their ability to act.

Pharma companies are committed to using electronic data capture in clinical trials. Technology adoption will continue to grow, as FDA and consumers want faster safety data.

Pharma companies want to promote their own, rather than hiring senior people away from competitors or other industries. But given the narrow backgrounds of the coming generation, fewer and fewer managers have the coordination and foresight needed to succeed in a general management job.

I realized that, as president of a pharmaceutical company, I am now a representative of the entire industry. As such, my toughest challenge is listening to and seeing the kind of scrutiny our industry is taking.

If you work for a company that isn't interested in increasing sales across your portfolio, don't read this article. Otherwise, you'll learn that your district managers (DM) are the keys to doing just that. DMs select and hire new sales reps, guide product knowledge, develop selling skills, provide feedback, and take action to turn around or terminate poor performers. The average industry DM is responsible for generating tens of millions of dollars in sales through his or her teams. But, only 45 percent of industry DMs achieve their sales goals. Companies that succeed in raising the overall effectiveness of their DMs will create sustainable competitive advantage.

When translating English materials into other languages, be careful of words that mean one thing in one dialect and something else in another dialect. Otherwise, you run the risk of referring to coaches as animal trainers.

Institutions bring value to industry not only through shared coursework or customized training programs, but also through leveraging the intellectual property of institutional personnel for corporate problem solving.

Conventional wisdom says that generics businesses are a drain on valuable resources. But these units are much less prone to the disastrous drug safety panics that Big Pharma has recently endured.

Every quarter, pharmaceutical manufacturers confront a dizzying array of price reporting obligations. Participation in the Medicare, Medicaid, Veterans Administration (VA), and Public Health Service (PHS) programs requires manufacturers to collect, organize, distill and manipulate vast quantities of information, and to generate from that data reportable figures that can have an enormous impact on the company's bottom line. It is critical that these figures be correct, not only to help ensure the integrity of these public programs, but because submission of false data to a federal agency is a prosecutable criminal offense, and the civil penalties and exposure can be staggering.

Contrary to myth, Paragraph IV certifications are not reserved only for blockbusters or high-volume primary care products. Three products under recent Paragraph IV challenges had sales of less than $50 million.

You can have a biotech company with a great technology base, but if it doesn't have a product in Phase II development, Wall Street won't reward the company by increasing the value of its stock price. When products are valued over technology, there is a higher premium for commercially-focused business leaders.

MVPs go beyond numbers to create extraordinary value for companies and their stockholders. They are the top two to five percent of employees. In other words, if you were to lose 100 people, which two to five would you protect at all costs?

As a reputation driver, ethical behavior has increased steadily in importance over the last three years.

Citing cherry-picked patients, unrealistic dosing, and placebo control, payers will increasingly require that the proof for payment of drugs must come from head-to-head trials.

Sometimes the loss of revenue from a branded drug can outweigh the royalty stream from an authorized generic.