Strategy

Gardasil embodies the kind of links between science, commercialization, and humanity that typify great pharma breakthroughs. It turned a medical success story into a campaign of empowerment. Merck used visionary science to produce a vaccine with the potential to eradicate the third-most-common cause of cancer worldwide, and taught girls how to talk about sensitive issues.

One mystery of human nature is why so many patients can't seem to take their pills properly. What's not in question is the size or seriousness of the problem. Half of all folks in the developed world who have a chronic disease don't follow their medication's dosing, scheduling, or other requirements. On top of the estimated 500 million prescriptions a year that go unfilled, another 500 million are not taken correctly. A mountain of studies have confirmed noncompliance's negative effects on everything from drug effectiveness and patient mortality to healthcare costs and pharma revenues. The World Health Organization has stamped nonadherence "a worldwide problem of striking magnitude."

It's a funny law of nature: 20 percent of the clouds produce 80 percent of the rain. And 20 percent of the people do 80 percent of the work. OK, leader, what do you plan to do about it?

I've been shocked that physicians haven't rebelled in unison against legislators and academics, at Harvard in particular, and fought back against those who have berated the integrity and ethics of the medical community. Is there anyone who seriously thinks a doctor will write one brand over another because of a ball point pen or a pad of paper?

It's important that the new class and Galvus successfully replace TZDs and sulfonylureas first, then outperform our competitor second. But in the end, we still want to be the leader.

The ability to customize small molecules-to make them better, safer, and easier to use-has long been a staple of pharmaceutical development. But until recently, scientists had few options for enhancing biologics. San Diego-based Ambrx wants to change that.

When Arthur Higgins first announced that he was about to take the reins of the healthcare group at Bayer, in 2004, colleagues were surprised.

The problem isn't that there's conflict between safety and efficacy or between getting a useful medicine to market and protecting the public from a dangerous one. The problem is that the conflict isn't well structured. That needs to change.

Isr?l makov has adventure in his blood. A fourth-generation Isr?li, he speaks proudly of his great grandmother, who bought and sold wool in Russia until the late 1890s when, at the age of 50, she moved to Palestine, bought a piece of land, and helped found a town in the wilderness. It was the kind of career move that Makov, CEO of Teva Pharmaceuticals, admires and emulates. As a boy, he rode a donkey to work in his father's orchards on the land his great grandmother bought. He attended an agricultural boarding school, started his career in citrus exports and-decades before Teva recruited him-managed Abic, the second-largest pharma company in Isr?l, and founded Interpharm, the country's first biotech company.

With "launched the world's best-selling drug" on his resume, Rob Scott was ready for his next professional endeavour. The former Pfizer executive is now head of R&D and chief medical officer at AtheroGenics, named for the signature technology that's being used to develop AGI-1067, a cardiovascular anti-inflammatory in late Phase III clinical trials.

Just because outside contractors and vendors are experts does not mean everything will happen exactly the way you want it to. There's a lot of oversight.

Advice for new leaders: Forget the irrelevant meetings, the 300 e-mails, and the 50 voicemails.

These "guns for hire" bring the science and marketing savvy that clients need, often with in-depth category experience, but without the commitment and cost associated with hiring a full-time employee.

What does it take to keep your employees on board? In the 1980s, employees looked for performance pay. In the 1990s, they wanted job security. Employees' needs have changed as society has, yet one thing has remained the same: Employees are always looking for something more out of their jobs. They want better quality of life at work.

In an article for the New York Times, reporter Damien Cave pointed out how few heroes have been publicly recognized by the Administration in the current war. Despite the fact that there have been incredible acts of heroism and gutsy leadership on the ground of this Iraq war, the powers that be, for the most part, are calling no attention to it-at least no prime-time attention. Damien's most damning example came from Major Bruce Norton, a military historian and author of Encyclopedia of American Military Heroes, who recounted how a Marine recently received his Navy Cross, the second-highest military honor-not with ceremony and honor, but in the mail.

Valeant is banking on Viramidine, a pro-drug of its longtime cash cow, ribavirin, to catapult the company to the next level.

Growing by Indication, Genentech Has a New Type of Blockbuster

No brand manufacturers plan to market generic versions of their own product, at least not until the patent expires. And why would they? As long as the branded version enjoys patent protection, marketing a cut-rate product would eat away profit margin during the years when a drug makes the most money.

To get along with the CFO, drug companies need to express more data in units that a health plan can integrate into its own internal actuarial analysis. The financial decision makers at a health plan want to know how a new drug affects the value of expected claims on the whole.

There comes a point when people have enough stuff in their lives, but they can never have enough meaning. Leaders have to find opportunities for their eams to do more than turn the machine of profit.

Market researchers often fail to realize that whenever they collect competitor information they are in fact collecting competitive intelligence. The same is true in reverse.

When rebate strategies are coupled with sales force and DTC spending, it results in "margin-negative" business-that is, sales that bring in less than the marginal cost of selling, promoting, and manufacturing the drug.

BMS' use of investigational toxicology puts it in good stead with FDA, which, under its Critical Path initiative, is pushing for more complete toxicology packages.

Leadership evolves from the dynamic of particular situations. Without Adolf Hitler, Winston Churchill may have been remembered as a quirky backbencher.

Eyes in the Back of Your Head