Thinking Pharma: To Strategise or Not To Strategise

There’s barely an organization on the planet that doesn’t claim to have a strategy.

But Management Centre Europe research shows that it’s ‘a custom more honour’d in the breech than in the observance.’

Thoughtware – the strategy – is indeed a rare prescription.

Even a company with the greatest strategy in the world also needs Orgware that will deliver their strategy.

Equally, it helps if the remuneration system rewards only those activities that help to achieve the strategy.

And let’s not forget a measurement system that is able to tell whether the strategy is actually being delivered.

But, at the heart of success is getting the Thoughtware – the strategy - right.

Kodak’s response to digital imaging was a classic case.

Great Orgware, great measurement, and everything else,……but a poor choice of, yes you remember, Strategy.

Quality Thoughtware was missing.

Kodak’s middle managers were unable to make a transition to think digitally.

A lack of quality Thoughtware resulted in Kodak experiencing a nearly 80% decline in its workforce, loss of market share, a tumbling stock price, and significant internal turmoil as a result of its failure to take advantage of a new digital technology.

Alas Poor Kodak we knew you well.”

^{After a Mis-Quote from William Shakespeare – Hamlet – Act V Scene I}

Pharma is renowned……..

Pharma is renowned for having great Orgware, and is really good at measuring things, but what strategies are they are following?

Pharmaco: To Be or Not To Be - The New Kodak?

There’s a new technology out there called Social Media and
it requires new Thoughtware.

A set of new dynamic, responsive strategies – Have you seen them yet?

Can you see any signs that Pharma is embracing the sort of Thoughtware transition
that is so necessary at this time of change in marketplace communications?

But What is Strategy Supposed to Deliver?

Professor Rita McGrath writes in the Harvard Business review that the goal of a great strategy was traditionally to achieve a "sustainable competitive advantage."

However, all this began to change in the early 1990's, when a number of scholars, such as Ian MacMillan and his co-author Rich D'Aveni, started talking about a phenomenon they called ‘Hyper-Competition’.

In hyper-competitive environments, to paraphrase Hobbes, the life of a competitive advantage is nasty, brutish and short.

In other words, advantages don't last for very long before competitive entry, imitation and matching erode their edge, or customers move on, or the environment changes in such a way that the advantage becomes irrelevant.

The Social Media Play

This hyper-competitive environment seems to exactly describe the world of Social Media.

LinkedIn has grown by 319% since 2007, Facebook has been adding 200,000 users a day and Twitter has grown by 422% during the last year. Internet advertising is up by 21% in spite of the economic downturn.

Yet despite the pivotal role of any form of strategy in organizational affairs, 90% of businesses are unable to execute the strategy they have on paper, because :-