Case Study

Design Thinking and Innovation at Pfizer, Inc.

In June 2018, Pfizer Inc. (Pfizer), one of the world’s premier biopharmaceutical companies, announced the three winning startups it had selected for participation in the second year of Pfizer Healthcare Hub: London. Pfizer supported this foster program for innovative startup to generate efficiencies in the delivery of healthcare solutions to patients or clinicians. “The Pfizer Healthcare Hub: London is an initiative designed to bring companies working in digital healthcare together with the experience and expertise of Pfizer’s UK and global network. The challenge for health tech start-ups in healthcare is that there is often a much longer lead time to sustainable adoption than in other digital spaces. Winners of competitive grant process the first of which took place in 2017. This got them the tailored support they need to move their ideas forward, including access to knowledge and expertise of the UK’s complex health network,” said Hamish Graham, manager of Pfizer Healthcare Hub London.

Pfizer Innovation Journey

Pfizer had a continuing history of going in for large mergers together with smaller strategic ones, to grow its pipeline. However, the company also continued to put emphasis on innovation which had been its core strength also continued to put emphasis on innovation for decades. It strove to find new ways to make its business more efficient and profitable.

Innovation in both products and business processes became a strategic factor for pharmaceutical companies in the rapidly changing global market. Pharmaceutical companies used innovation as a tool to respond to the massive transition taking place in how medicines were discovered, developed and marketed to a diverse customer base. Pfizer works with innovative research partners across a range of disciplines to improve the quality, speed and productivity of clinical research. Using digital tools, new ways of collecting data and expanding access through diverse partnership, Pfizer is developing breakthroughs that change patients’ lives faster than ever before. Pfizer uses there major types of clinical trials namely Digitizing Clinical Trials, Data Outside Traditional Clinical Trial and Expanding Access To Clinical Trials.

The Integration of Design Thinking for Innovation

Pfizer had set up global idea management programs since early 2000s. The company believed customer centric ideas could come from anyone, the developers, designers, sales people or researchers. However, it also understood that expertise alone could not be enough for a sustainable culture of innovation. “Innovation with regard to developing new drugs has always been a core part of the success of our business. What’s newer for our organisation is a focus on innovation beyond drug development. How do we innovate our business model? How do we innovate our business partnership and how do we look to operate the company in a different way,” said Wendy Mayer, vice president for worldwide innovation at Pfizer.

Pfizer has a history of leadership in product innovation it is written in their DNA. The struggle for any large enterprise like Pfizer occurs where innovation is perceived as disruptive, challenging the status quo in some fundamental way. Overcoming that and embracing change requires significant persuasive efforts from top management. This includes laying forth a clear vision of why change is necessary so everyone understands that their future depends on acknowledging it. At Pfizer, has done that by having CEO Ian Read and all top management reinforce three fundamental truths: company R&D structure and investment flows will not be the same in five years as it is today; the commercial “go-to-market” model will need to adapt to a much more stringent environment, dominated by price-sensitive payers; and that the bottom line depends on furnishing evidence that their products improve clinical outcomes for the patient and support objectives in public health.

The second element is providing employees with the tools that enable them to suggest and then execute a good idea. A good example is the Innovative Communities initiative launched in cooperation with Microsoft in September 2010. It allows a colleague to put a proposal together, solicit the support of other colleagues, and create a community and constituency to declare, “We think there is an opportunity here.” The group then drafts a business plan and is required to obtain the endorsement of a member of the ELT, who becomes the initiative’s champion and agrees to fund it. You might see this as a bit process-oriented, and concede it is. But people forget that innovation requires discipline as well as creativity. A good idea is nothing unless you can execute to produce a result.

Looking Ahead

Industry experts were of the opinion that by incorporating design thinking into its business model, Pfizer had truly been able to differentiate itself in the competitive pharmaceutical industry. Design thinking not only helped the company to get a fresh perspective on innovation but also became its core competence in identifying and meeting customer needs and preferences.

We are all about strategy that is defining the themes and building the platforms that bring us to the next stage of growth. In that regard, our first priority is fixing what Ian Read calls our “innovative core.” That means finding creative ways to develop firstin-class drugs, tap our existing therapeutic portfolio to address unmet medical needs, and ensure all patients across geographies and incomes obtain access to our products. So we have to innovate around things like cooperation with academia to generate new drugs and complementary technologies like diagnostics; to build new approaches to reimbursement based on an integrated evidence base responsive to demands from payers for more clinical differentiation; and to invent new delivery and distribution systems that inform clinicians and patients and speed access to the patient, at lower cost.

Internally, it’s a function of keeping our BU leaders and chief science officers happy while not relinquishing the role of advocate for the best interests of the full organization. It’s a careful balancing act. And today is a great time to be a leader because change is irrevocable in this industry. It has to be embraced as a positive. Showing fear and sowing pessimism is not a management skill that is going to work in the years ahead.

(IBS Center for Management Research, retrieved on 28 August, 2021).

1. Examine the THREE (3) major types of clinical trials used by Pfizer that would be able to change patients’ lives faster than ever before.

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