Adviser and Business Mentor to Bioscience SMEs and Startups
Apologies for the radio silence over the past 18 months. My work life took an interesting turn and I’ve been swamped ever since setting up both a new venture capital firm and a new TechBio startup. I’m back blogging now, and from a different perspective – no longer just a retained adviser, interim CBO or board member for startups, but also a startup CEO and venture investor.
Continue reading “New chapter in my career”
Partnering assets with large pharmaceutical, diagnostic or medical device multinationals is a critical part of the business model for many small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the life sciences. But does it make sense for an SME to have a clearly defined partnering strategy or should it be opportunistic?
Continue reading “Strategic Asset Partnering for Bioscience SMEs—Planned or Opportunistic?”
Pfizer’s proposed Hospira acquisition is the latest in a long line of deals that have moved generic drugs into the mainstream of Big Pharma corporate strategy. Once seen as threats eating away at their expensively-built revenue streams, generics now have a distinct role in many Big Pharmas’ business models.
Continue reading “Generics have come full circle for Big Pharma”
Most Pharma companies focus their R&D activities by therapeutic area. But in the New Pharma world of Payers as Customers, does this continue to make sense? In this article, we will look at the history and evolution of therepautic area focus in R&D, highlight today’s new requirements and suggest a pragmatic approach for focusing R&D to create tomorrow’s transformative medicines.
Continue reading “BioPharma R&D Focus Paradigms when Payers are the Customers”
The BioPharma industry is in the midst of disruptive renewal. Executives and managers need to be Change Leaders. But leading change in BioPharma involves some additional challenges.
Continue reading “Why being a Change Leader in BioPharma is different”
Throughout the past two decades, biomedical companies have learnt painfully that industrialized management of R&D does not deliver. Using illustrations from the pharmaceutical sector, this article looks back on the principal approaches that were adopted to transform R&D productivity over this period. We reflect on what has definitely not worked well, and in consequence, we discuss how the emphasis is now shifting back to people, relying on human ingenuity and teamwork to innovate – through focus and an open architecture. We conclude by identifying the key success factors and the new challenges that R&D leaders need to manage.
Continue reading “Two Decades of Biomedical R&D Improvement Initiatives”
Robert Thong 