Darwin's Medicine

In the fourth and final episode of the "What makes a biomedical strategy expert?" series, I look at the third of Roger Kneebone's "areas to master": Mastering Relationships. In an industry that depends on cross functional teams, such as the life sciences, mastering relationships is a core capability of a strategist.  To do it, you need to understand what a working relationship is (spoiler, it’s about trust). Then you need to know who to build relationships (spoiler, it’s up, down and sideways).  Then you need to know how truly expert strategists build those multidimensional, up, down and sideways trust-based relationships in the real-world context of pharma and medtech.  Watch this video, and the others in the series, if you really want to be a strategy expert in the life sciences.

It’s natural to get excited about your technology. I’m the worst offender.  But when you’re trying the build a value proposition, it’s a mistake to start with your product or technology, however sexy it is. It’s much more effective to start with the needs of the customers you’re trying to win or keep. And not just a patient, payer or professional but all of them at once.  Watch this video if you want to be a marketer, not a producter.

You probably think that diversity is a good thing and that diverse teams are more effective than teams of clones. And you would be right. Except you wouldn’t.  The diversity that makes a positive difference is cognitive diversity – how we identify, absorb and use information differently from the person in the next seat. And cognitive diversity doesn’t always equate to cultural, gender or ethnic diversity. So whilst there is social value is those kinds of diversity, there’s a danger than when you try to build a diverse team, you accidentally get a clone team anyway.  Watch this video for a short summary of this piece of Darwinian thinking.

Honestly, I know you think digital health is the next big thing.  And it is.  Just not the way you think.  The future doesn’t like with the geeky little app for your product. It lies with companies that learn to breathe data.  In this video, I use the analogy of a massive change in Earth’s environment to help you understand how you can adapt to the massive coming change in your market. Watch this video if you want to adapt to a digital future.

Try this little game. Ask 10 colleagues to write down their definition of a business model and compare them.  You’ll find that even though we all throw the term around, we don’t agree on what it means. And there’s even less clarity about how to build one or transform one to another.  In this short video, I’ll share my Darwin-based definition of a business model, discuss the 26 life science business models that come out of my research and describe the “genetic engineering” that is necessary to adapt your business model to your changing market.  Watch this video to understand what business models really are.

One of the challenges that face both academics and executives is sensemaking from conversations.  Quantitative data only takes you so far and sooner rather and later you need to talk to people, ask questions and makes sense of their answers.  There’s a little trick to this that I’ve learned from hundreds of qualitative research interviews. In this video, I illustrate with an example about biotech clusters but it’s very generalizable.

Wouldn't it be great if you could look into the future of your market and how the industry will evolve? Well you can. Not necessarily perfectly or quantitatively but well enough to help your planning and gain a competitive advantage. This issue of Darwin's Medicine tells you how.

In the third episode of the "What makes a biomedical strategy expert?" series, I look at the second of Roger Kneebone's "areas to master": Mastering Knowledge.  In a knowledge based industry such as the life sciences, mastering knowledge is both essential and becoming more difficult as we are overwhelmed with information. So mastering knowledge is an essential trait for strategy experts, who need to synthesise scientific and market knowledge.  Mastering knolwedge involves understanding the differences between data, information, knoweldge and insight, the different "flavours" of knowledge and the three ways of creating knowledge.  In essence, it is a process of synthesising some piece of knowledge about the market that you know but your competitors don't. It is not about slicing and dicing data into lots of good-looking powerpoint slides.  This video will interest anyone who thinks they are, or wants to be, a strategy expert in pharma, medtech or other biomedical businesses.

Will the controversial approval of Adulhelm lead to commercial success for Biogen and Eisai? It's an important question for them, their competitors, healthcare systems and payers. Darwinian evolution provides a good way to look at the question and identfies two likely answers.

Many pharma industry executives think that success can be found in ‘best practice’ – imitating the behaviour of successful companies. Many consultancy companies make good business selling the idea of ‘best practice’ in business models, strategy or organisational structure. Yet the concept has no evidence base and runs counter to the idea that every firm is different and faces a different market situation. In this video, I’ll describe why the idea of ‘best practice’ is a myth and why the mantra ‘what works is what fits’ is the only one that acknowledges the realities of your firm’s uniqueness and your market’s characteristics. Using examples in from business model design, strategic planning processes and organisational structuring, it will explain how to address these challenges in a firm-specific way, avoiding the consultants’ cookie cutter.