THE PHARMA INDUSTRY IS RESTING ON A KNIFE-EDGE—AND IT'S TOO LATE TO TURN BACK

Just waitng for the crash...

Commercial power and control have moved from big pharma companies to service providers

Large pharmaceutical companies were the alpha male of the pharma industry up to the early 1980s. Then they took a wrong fork in the road, and ironically became called Big Pharma.

Today, there is nothing ‘big’ about those once large pharmaceutical companies. Other than ownership of molecular patents and sales & marketing machinery, everything else is owned by third-party companies.

I wrote about the dynamic that led to this in DISRUPTING PHARMA—ONLY POLITICIANS CAN DO IT, HERE’S WHY AND HOW.

In a nutshell, big pharma, as it became known, divested its critcal assets and skilled workers over a period circa 1985 - 1995. This included:

• Warehousing, storage and distribution of finished products, together with sales data relating to their own products.

• Product development, manufacturing, analytical methods development, engineering services and facility design, transport logistics, and anything else necessary…