Thinking Pharma: Social Leverage in Pharma

Pulling levers

The image of the railway signalman up in his elevated signal-box controlling and directing the movement of the network is a big part of my childhood memories .

Controlling the course of a major Pharmaceutical Corporation is simply a question of pulling the right levers .

Right?

Well, it helps if you pull then in the right order.

And at the right time.

But it can’t be all that hard can it?

It’s not like doing any real work. Tote that barge, Lift that bale, Get a little drunk and you end up debarred or suspended through the FDA, or worse.

Moving the World

Archimedes is quoted as saying “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world”

Any Pharma executive worth their salt will recognise this as a typical Research and Development bid for extra funding. Stuff like that comes across their desk every day. Give me a bigger lever, give me a stronger fulcrum, and I will deliver the goods.

Yeah?

What killer drugs did Archimedes ever produce?

Where was he when the ROI was calculated at the end of the day?

Probably bathing in reflected glory from the Sales Department.

Leverage

Some organisations are greatly attracted to levers.

Financial levers.

They are highly leveraged, which generally means they’ve borrowed a bucket load of money, which they use to try and create more bucket-loads of money.

But it can mean the adoption of licensing or joint venture arrangements using their IP assets.

McDermott Will & Emery suggest that many executives and general counsel fail to appreciate and take periodic inventories of these assets, which are consequently under-exploited.

Until a biotech or pharmaceutical enterprise has commercial products on the market, the commercial value of that company is largely dependent upon its intellectual property portfolio and the name recognition of key scientists at the company.

This is where Intellectual Property Protection and Leveraging Analysis (IPPLA) may be useful.

The focus of conducting an IPPLA is on a realistically and creatively assessing a company’s IP assets, determining the strength of these assets and finally looking for opportunities to leverage these assets into new markets thereby creating new revenue streams or improving existing business channels without devoting large capital expenditures.

Leveraging Social Media

Leveraging existing social networks for business can provide a powerful new way to generate value. Companies like Jobvite lead the way in the recruitment space.

What other aspects of your business can benefit from the Thoughtware that lies behind Social Media?