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Operationalize strategic plans - from formulation to execution across the organization.
Dan Smith and I have written a white paper on strategic R&D portfolio management that summarizes many of the lessons and insights we’ve gleaned during twelve years of client engagements. The white paper is organized into eight ‘rules’: Avoid incomplete strategies Build an actionable strategy Don’t buy in to bubble plots Move beyond prioritization Present...
It’s no secret that projects in the earlier stages of the development lifecycle are evaluated and managed very differently than projects in the later stages. One major pharmaceutical company believed these differences to be so great, however, that they split their development organization in two. Over time, the structural gulf became a cultural gulf, leading...
Humans have always been and will always be storytellers. From the fireside tales of bygone millennia to today’s TV dramas and movies, the power of the narrative holds us in rapt attention as it both entertains and makes sense of the world around us. How does this relate to pharmaceutical portfolio management? Essentially, portfolio management...
A product manager and an analyst are discussing the revenue forecast for a product in development. Poring over the financials, the manager asks: “Have you considered how SUPR-3 will impact sales of our other SUPR products?” The analyst replies confidently: “Yes! Right here you can see we are estimating SUPR-3 to take a...
It’s that time of year again: We find more requests for proposals (RFPs) in our inbox during the late summer and early fall than any other time of year. RFPs vary dramatically in length, complexity, and level of ambition. In a spirit of cooperation, allow me to make some suggestions about those RFPs, and about...
In previous blogs, APM: How Much Are Your Applications Really Costing You? and APM: Why Organizations Don’t Understand the TCO of Their Applications, I focused on how organizations can start to determine the technical and business value of their application portfolios. In this post, I would like to focus on aligning applications portfolios with the business...
When we engage with a client, our primary objective is to ensure that they are investing in the right projects: Those in closest alignment with their strategic goals. Without proper attention paid to project execution, however, you’ll never unlock the potential of your chosen projects. Last year we blogged about the distinctions between operational and...
As we have said before, every forecast you’ll ever build is wrong. The truth may be out there, but due to a lack of perfect information about the future, you won’t be able to reveal it before your project review meeting. There is a paradox here: The more you insist on the truth, the more...
What is an R&D-driven company with $10-50 billion of cash in the bank to do? In the last twelve months, Merck, Pfizer, HP, AstraZeneca, and Bristol-Myers Squibb have announced stock buybacks totaling over $25 billion, and layoffs of over 30,000 employees. So apparently, for many firms, the best use of their cash hoard is a...
Finance and R&D can get along You’ve just finished briefing the executive committee on the methods for project valuation that you have worked so hard to establish in your R&D group. The team has finally acknowledged that risk needs to be managed in all its potential forms. You’ve reached consensus on the following set of...
