Description
This is a white paper originally appearing in the April 2017 issue of the Harvard Business Review
The authors – Martin Ihrig and Ian MacMillan – led a large, multi-national pharmaceutical company through exercises aimed at helping the company better understand and assess options for future growth. This company has realized its future can no longer be dependent on R&D and the risk in being pipeline dependent. The leadership wanted to know what are the other opportunities that may take the company away from the traditional R&D-based model. Through several exercises, well-laid out in the paper – the company came to the conclusion that it needed to refocus from patient acquisition to patient retention – an opinion long held here at Inspired Health Strategies. The company finally realized what other industries have long-vince learned – that their future is finding ways to keep its customers instead of continually finding new ones. How to do that? Via building a portfolio of patient support services. Voila!
The authors are really focused on the process by which they led the company to its conclusions. IHS is selfishly interested as it is good to see a company make an investment in taking its leadership through this kind of process and come to the conclusion it did. The industry is waking up to the idea that real change in business model is necessary to compete in the future.
