Calling All Leaders

Who is going to lead the pharmaceutical industry in the difficult decade ahead? It may sound like a rhetorical question, but it's not.

This month, Pharmaceutical Executive is launching a search for the industry's next generation of leaders—the people who will ultimately take over from the Hassans, Vasellas, and Kindlers who currently hold the reins. With that goal, we've created the Pharmaceutical Executive Emerging Pharma Leadership Awards to honor these folks for their achievements and (we hope) egg them on toward greater ones. The competition is open to current employees of the pharmaceutical industry who are age 45 or under as of January 1, 2008 (our apologies to the talented people who work in agencies, PR firms, consultancies, and contract service organizations, but you're not eligible).

For more description of the award, see the ad on page 92 of this issue. To nominate a colleague, or to nominate yourself, visit www.pharmexec.com/leadership. Entries will be assessed by a panel of judges, including Pharm Exec's editors. The winners will be profiled in a special editorial feature in our June issue.

New Features

The leadership awards are hardly the only innovations at Pharm Exec these days. Here's a quick look at some of the others:

New Web site design We've just rolled out the latest version of pharmexec.com. We've improved the navigation system, creating special-interest home pages that will help you quickly find content on, for instance, R&D, sales, marketing, or strategy.

To me, the best part of the design takes place behind the scenes, where we've retagged thousands of articles in the Pharm Exec archive to make them easier to find. But there are also new features that we hope you'll enjoy, including Discovery News—daily updates on early-stage medical discoveries that will have an impact on the pharmaceutical industry—and something we're very excited about, the Pharm Exec blog (more about that in a moment).

Improved technology coverage As regulation becomes more complex and companies are forced to do more with less, we expect technology to play a more prominent role in many companies. With that in mind, we've created a new technology column and we've scheduled extra technology articles for the year. Our goal: to give senior executives a perspective on the business applications and business consequences of information tech.

Expanded deal coverage There's no doubt that licensing and M&A are going to be significant concerns of pharma for the forseeable future. To respond, we're increasing our coverage of deals. (For an example, see "Big Deals," an analysis of the biggest and most interesting recent licensing arrangements, on page 38.)

The Pharm Exec blog As part of our commitment to providing more frequent news and commentary about the industry, and to making the Pharm Exec experience more interactive, we've launched a new blog. (You can reach it from pharmexec.com.) It's already up and running, but stay tuned for a whole range of planned new developments: guest contributors, audio and video, and much more.

We're far from through with updating and improving Pharm Exec. Let us know what you think of what we've accomplished—and what you'd like to see us turn our attention to next.

Patrick Clinton

Editor-in-chief

pclinton@advanstar.com