Death of the thought silos
Pharma divisions commercial, R&D, finance, sales, manufacturing and more at times almost seem like separate nations on wildly differing planets. Whether youre an outside observer or an industry insider, youll likely acknowledge that these groups have very little in common. And lets face it, thats because the people who make up pharmas various divisions have very little in common. Their backgrounds, educations, training and interests differ greatly from one another.
Each group has their own ideas, priorities, agendas and approaches. So its no surprise that pharma has been and in most cases still is a very siloed industry. For the most part, the groups work together when they must and return to their comfort zones of uniqueness at the earliest opportunity. Suffice it to say, theres a reason why we call them divisions theres an obvious and visible divide.
And perhaps no one has been more of a unique entity than forecasters. OK, they interact widely with other groups to gather the information they use to create their forecasts and again to deliver the results, but lets be real, youre not likely to see a bunch of forecasters intermingled with R&D scientists or even the commercial crowd in the company cafeteria at lunch.
The silos grew up out a distinction in the way each of the groups of pharma workers thinks and problems solves. They have completely different thought processes that naturally separate them into groups that are difficult to bridge.
But Ive noticed an interesting meeting of the minds, if you will, of late. Everyone in pharma these days seems to be talking of the need to deliver value for money, to discover, develop and market drugs that bring patients better health outcomes. Suddenly, theres this goal and language of commonality that seems to be bridging the gap among the traditional groups within pharma.
And as seen in todays feature, Leaving copy and paste forecasting in the past, its even true in forecasting, where teams are looking for ways to fold calculations of value into their estimates of future drug performance. If nothing else tells us that the pursuit of delivering value to patients, payers and physicians is the right goal, perhaps the fact that its finally a concept that were all starting to get our brains around and put our efforts behind should tell us something.
Maybe at least the thought silos are crumbling down within pharma.