Here's a couple of links to blog posts outlining possible reasons that Big Pharma R&D is experiencing such a low return in bringing new products to market --- especially over the last 10 years. One factor that is discussed is -- CULTURE (see Life Sci VC and In the Pipeline). The basic premise?
Fundamentally, I think the bulk of the last decade’s productivity decline is attributable to a culture problem. The Big Pharma culture has been homogenized, purified, sterilized, whipped, stirred, filtered, etc and lost its ability to ferment the good stuff required to innovate. This isn’t covered in most reviews of the productivity challenge facing our industry, because its nearly impossible to quantify, but it’s well known and a huge issue.
These effects are variously attributed to a multitude of large cross functional committes, with all their associated bureacracy, making all the decisions very s-l-o-w-l-y......, risk aversion (i.e. ass covering) and unwillingness to kill bad projects before they've dragged on past their due date, and mega-mergers or internal reorgs that constantly stall projects while all the new players and pieces get assembled and reassembled. All of this plays havoc on continuity, quick decision making, empowerment of development teams, nimbleness, innovation, blah blah blah --basically all the positive characteristics organizations say they are striving for.
But the basic conclusion, for now, is that Big Pharma's culture is its own worst enemy when it comes to R&D productivity. There seems to be a need to simplify and empower teams if you really want to see any results in an acceptable time frame.
The stakes are high too. If you doubt that, just look at this article from Fierce Biotech that details the R&D spending of the Top 10 Big Pharma -- which is topping $70 B per annum now. Then look at the productivity of many of these same organizations as judged by new drug introductions in the last 10 years........not very pretty.
Posted by Bruce Lehr Apr 25th 2012.
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