How Big Pharmas Simultaneously Repel And Embrace Innovation

Pharmas are attractive for innovators pursuing approaches that are strongly endorsed by senior leadership and reasonably welcomed by the operational areas of the organization. The way some pharmas are working through the complex supply-chain logistics required for delivering CAR-T therapy or gene therapy at scale offer striking examples.

On the other hand, pharma organizations generally prioritize caution over agility, and incremental change over radical new approaches. Thus even innovation welcomed by the C-suite (like a lot of the original digital and data efforts) can run into the grindstone when those in the trenches can’t see the benefit, and experience only burden.

In general, large pharmas, like other big companies, are likely to remain generally resistant to profound innovation, though they will embrace and really go after specific opportunities they view as adequately validated or promising. Such traction requires explicitly endorsement and constant, active support from the top echelons of management if the approach is to even have a chance. Meanwhile, detached innovation initiatives reliably garner transient publicity but tend to achieve little durable organizational impact.

There’s likely a considerable opportunity to harness the many bottom-up innovative ideas to which pharma seems constitutively unable to respond; the robust startup ecosystem offers an attractive alternative or salvage pathway for some but not all of these promising approaches.

The full Forbes article can be viewed at this link.