Diary of a decade – Ten years in Europe, the Middle East and Africa
pharmafile | July 13, 2015 | Feature | Medical Communications, Sales and Marketing | Astellas, Ken Jones
It’s hard to imagine how much a company can change in a decade.
When Astellas Pharma Europe was launched 10 years ago, I had a staff of just 66 in our rented Staines office, so it really did feel like starting from scratch. But we weren’t short of vision or ambition.
Looking back now, we have achieved the big targets we set for ourselves, having become a global leader in our key therapeutic areas, as shown by our successes with Vesicare (solifenacin succinate), Prograf (tacrolimus) and more recently Xtandi (enzalutamide) and Betmiga (mirabegron). But more importantly, our approach has given us the resilience to ride out the challenges we have faced along the way, and puts us in a good position for continued success.
Navigating a merger
Astellas – which means ‘light of the future’ in Japanese – was founded in 2005 through the merger of two Japanese companies, Fujisawa and Yamanouchi (who I had joined not long before).
The match was a good one. Yamanouchi was a world leader in urology, Fujisawa had the number one immunosuppressant for transplantation, but both companies had strengths in dermatology, and so there was a 20% overlap in their markets. And geographically the companies were a good match too; Yamanouchi had a strong position in Europe and Asia, whereas Fujisawa was well established in the US, so bringing the two together gave us a truly global footprint.
From the start, we did things differently from many western pharmaceutical companies. The merger was announced 12 months in advance, meaning we had a full year to plan for the integration and to work out how best to organise our operations. In particular, we had time to consider and select the best talent from each firm for the new company, and ensure everyone in both Fujisawa and Yamanouchi was treated respectfully and fairly – which was especially important to me.
Both legacy companies had a history of being the new kid on the block and prevailing. So for example at Yamanouchi, when we launched Flomax (tamsulosin hydrochloride) for benign prostatic hyperplasia, although we were fourth to market and no-one expected much of us, we still punched well above our weight and became market leader in a very short period of time. Similarly, Fujisawa’s transplant immunosuppressant Prograf had to take on a well-established competitor (cyclosporine) and yet soon led the market. So making a mark was already in Astellas’ DNA.
Moving on from legacy products
In a sense those two products were also our greatest concern, because together they accounted for three-quarters of our revenue when Astellas was created in 2005, and they were both due to come off patent in 2006 and 2009 respectively. So the big issue was how to maintain the legacy businesses and at the same time allocate resources to new areas.
In our corporate strategy document, VISION 2015, we focused on medical conditions with high unmet need where we believed we could best leverage our existing scientific competencies and make a demonstrable difference to patients’ lives. Finding those new therapeutic areas has meant closely engaging with our key stakeholders and listening closely to what they have to say.
When we started engaging with leading specialists they were shocked. They were used to being talked at, but we wanted to listen, to learn: What was their biggest frustration? What was missing that would make the difference for their patients? We also reached out to academia, accepting that we cannot create every innovation by ourselves alone. So we made it our business to find the best academics, and we established a lot of partnerships which have been critical to our progress. And those conversations truly guided us.
Freedom from quarterly focus
One of the great things about working for a Japanese company is that we do not have the quarter-to-quarter focus on sales that you find in Western companies. It is very unusual to have this 10-year vision, with very specific goals which we pursue ruthlessly. I have an annual target, and I have a year to figure it out; I do not have the quarter-to-quarter pressures my peers have to bow to. This means we can be much more strategic and have time for our vision to unfold.
The result is that in the EMEA we have launched, on average, a new product in each of the past nine years, which compares very favourably with our competitors who are struggling to launch at this rate. Our sales have doubled and our and our workforce has grown considerably. We have built on our original areas of expertise and excellence as well as introducing other new cutting-edge medicines in different therapy areas. And we are looking to expand our base further; for instance at the moment we are, exploring possibilities in ophthalmology and muscle diseases.
Role of talented staff
Our staff are key to driving our growth and success. At the start of the merger, one of our biggest risks was employee disengagement and a flight of talent, which is why it was so crucial that we handled the transition properly. This included how we treated the people who were leaving – something I learned was very important to those who were staying.
By handling that well, we improved staff commitment to the new company. And it means a lot to me that in the last (and previous) Towers Watson employee survey, 91% of our staff said they were proud to be part of the company, which beats the global pharmaceutical industry benchmark.
One of our core strategic values is that every employee has the potential to change our destiny. That has been important to help us attract talent, because half our staff joined the company in the past five years as we built expertise in new therapeutic areas. In Europe, the Middle East and Africa our territory spans more than 70 countries and we have employees representing a range of backgrounds and cultures. Respecting those differences has been essential to our success. It is all part of our ethos of making sure the best idea wins ‒ it doesn’t matter where it comes from.
I think the fact that Astellas has performed so well over the past 10 years, despite the changing commercial landscape, the tightening regulatory environment, and increasingly rationed healthcare delivery, is a testament to our core values of tackling high unmet needs and serving the patient. These have meant we are always ahead of the changes, we embrace change, and we are not complacent. And we think that will serve us well in the future.
Ken Jones is president and chief executive of operations at Astellas EMEA.
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