Pharma needs fresh ideas from outside industry, says Barker
pharmafile | February 17, 2009 | News story | Research and Development, Sales and Marketing |Â Â ABPI, strategyÂ
Pharma must re-invent itself and inject new ideas into its business model by hiring talented people from outside the sector, according to Richard Barker.
Delivering a keynote speech at the Economist conference in London, the ABPI's director general said pharma was still too incestuous, and needed to bring in outside talent to transform its business model.
Barker said the industry's goal had to be "re-inventing not re-trenching." He added: "If we're willing to re-invent ourselves, we can emerge from this recession with at least one powerful stake in the economic future."
Dr Barker said companies should draw on the pool of account management and communication skills that exists outside the often inward-looking industry.
He said: "[We] need to use the right people and channels to build and maintain relationships with every point that makes or influences decisions. Its a completely different world."
Barker said fresh approaches were needed across the business supply chain, including R&D, regulation of products and access to medicines.
He says the common vertical integration model with some external outsourcing should be swapped for an open innovation model, where a virtual network of people and organisations contribute to the business.
He gave GSK as a good example of this, having set up a drug discovery partnership with Ranbaxy, while also forging academic partners, including embedding its own staff at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute.
Barker said sales and marketing must also be reinvented, and even called for it to be renamed as value and access management.
He suggested sales and marketing should switch its purpose to being about establishing and presenting the value of a new medicine to a whole range of decision makers.
He said Pfizer was an example of a company not simply promoting functions of their portfolios but creating value propositions, through ventures like Pfizer Health Solutions.
He also stressed the need to work flexibly over UK access and pricing, praising the patient access schemes agreed by companies like Novartis with Lucentis and Janssen Cilag with Velcade.
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