In the past few months, I have been traveling extensively across the globe several times for business, where I have interacted with many global C-Level pharma executives. I was truly surprised and amazed to learn how afraid and insecure many of these executives are...
Many executives are afraid that they have never seen the state of industry in such weak manner. They are worried about (in no particular order):
- Weak pipelines/productivity
- Rising costs
- share prices / ROI
- Competition (this is a big one - as they are no longer just afraid of generic threat but also new players from India, China, Korea, as well as virtual companies being funded by VCs)
- Political pressure
- Social pressure
- Leadership gaps
- And last but not the least: "What business do they want to be in?"
Lot of these executives have risen through the ranks and have earned their stripes by putting in years in the trenches... but those times were great... Gone are those days when you can simply grow by acquisitions and licensing and cutting backroom deals with generic companies.. These executives feel lonely, scared and without any more options...
I must clarify that 100% of these executives are from non-generic pharma companies as in large pharma or biotechs.
I was even more intrigued to see that a few of these guys wondered aloud about just taking a package and leave...
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