Pharma Strategy Blog

As the New Year begins and everyone shifts gears after the two week break over the Holidays, I realised a few things that were relevant to me personally.  This year will mark my 7th seventh year in consulting, six of those running Icarus.  Is it really that long?  Wow.

Over time, this has become a blessing because while consultants come and go ‘in between jobs’, we’re still here providing longevity and reassurance that a relationship is there for the long haul and not as flash in the pan merchants.

That’s a good thing and a bad thing though.  Those that stand still will not grow but be left behind.  You have to keep innovating and creating to survive in this world.  Reliability is also important, but delivering value and intelligent insight and analysis rather than mere data is what most of our customers seem to want and need.

The other day, someone asked me why we read a lot of scientific papers as well as going to so many conference and meetings.  The answer is that’s how we stay ahead of current and future trends, new ideas and innovation.  It’s a lot of data to shift through but then, that’s what clients want: more than they understand themselves, as no one wants to hear what they already know back.

Still, I have a long list of lot’s of interesting concepts and ideas to discuss on this blog in 2010, some new, some reinvention of old ideas in different guises, some yet to reveal their true results (from phase III studies) at conferences such as AACR, ASCO and ASH.  It will be fascinating to see what new technologies and pipeline drugs emerge as real new advances in their area.  Somehow, the New Year also brings a renewed sense of urgency and hope quite unlike any other month in the year.

Last week, I was browsing through company pipelines and was struck at how little is ready for market this year, with many phase III projects probably not maturing until 2011.  2010 may well be the year of consolidation in Pharma and Biotech, where many companies take stock and get ready for a big push in 2011, when the biggest patent expiries are most likely to hit. There’s a few expected this year too, though, as Pharma Gossip nicely highlighted this morning.

January promises to be a busy start to the year:

1. It heralds many companies presenting year end reviews and their forward look at 2010.  I’ll be keeping an eye on these and observing any new trends as they come out.  
2. The AACR-IASLC joint conference on Lung Cancer is also being held later this month from 11-14th Jan in San Diego (details here and here), so if anyone wants to meet up for networking then, let me know.  There’s a lot on pathways, stem cells, genome-wide approaches, as well as models for earlier detection, so it should be a very interesting meeting.

In the meantime, we also have a stack of client reports due, proposals to write, phone calls and email enquiries to return etc… sound familiar?  

Ok, let’s roll!  

Welcome back everyone, a wonderful New Year to y’all.

PS 

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