I recently attended an interesting panel discussion. Among the questions that were raised, one really caught the attention of the audience. That was around a new bold change of a large mult-international pharm. The panelist at the focus has been recently recruited by a large Pharma from a small biotech company to lead a new business unit. Different from traditional business unit or therapeutic area run by a large pharma, the new business unit is set more like a small biotech company. Not only the key managers are recruited from small biotech companies, they are also given a fix-term contract to come up with a new drug. They are given sufficient funding and almost unlimited power to mobile all the resources they have in order to develop a new drug!.Large pharma companies are increasingly unhappy about progress in their pipelines.  The CEO of Pfizer recently acknowledged that to public. As a result, Pfizer laid off hundreds of its research scientists. Similar actions can be seen in other big pharmas. Traditionally, when there is a short of pipeline, big pharmas would go for shopping and take the new lead in-house for further development. Lately, they seem to prefer cutting off their own RD unit and to swallow a small company with their pipelines. The difference between the two approaches is a “spirit” issue. They feel that people working at a small biotech company are more “motivated”, and more ”adventurous” and are eager to achieve, whereas such a “high spirit” got lost in large pharma when all the best working conditions, pay benefits and job security are provided. Therefore, it woul help to increase performance by bringing such spirit back to large pharmas. Having worked in small start-up, med-sized biotech and now in a large pharma myself, I can see why such an idea would be so attractive to the management team of large pharmas.

While almost everyone on the panel would like to see such approach succeed, they do point out a few issues that may work against it.  The higher productivity of a small start-up is usually achieved under unique circumstances. The owner and funding scientists are often passionate about their idea and are willing to sacrifice themselves to achieve their dream. At the same time, shot of fund is a constant treats hunting them down 24/7.  All these force the starters to work much harder, much more creative with much less. If there is such a thing of “start-up spirit”, it certainly demonstrated under those conditions.

What if those conditions/restrictions are all or mostly lifted? Can our entrepreneurs still keep such “spirit” when “money is not an issue” ? In another word, would the new model “spirit + money” work better or big pharma?

I am sure all the panelists including those in the game are eager to see the results.