Blog #1: Analyzing the External Strategic Environment and Evaluating Industry Dynamics

The global trends that affect different markets and industries are not stagnant. They may seem that way over a short period of time, but eventually they will change, and those leaders who are observant and adaptive are the ones best positioned for success within their respective industries. The reason so many global trends are being disrupted recently can be attributed to a few main causes, most importantly the shift in global markets (regarding both people and companies) and the rise of technology and inter-connectivity.

As someone interested in the health care and consulting industries, I know that understanding your competitors and being able to analyze the current industry trends is exceedingly important. During my time working as an intern for a global pharmaceutical company based in Japan, I was able to get firsthand experience of this and see how industry experts respond to dynamic markets on a day to day business. The company was founded over 200 years ago in Japan, and today has offices or has acquired companies in locations such as Boston, San Diego, Madrid, Zurich and Singapore. In order to compete in the pharmaceutical industry, the company has employed an aggressive growth strategy, acquiring two companies in two different countries in the last two years, helping expand its portfolio of drugs into areas such as Rare Disease and Plasma Derived Therapies.

Within my therapeutic area unit under Research and Development, we had a full Strategic Insights team focused on market research, competitive intelligence and forecasting. This did not include the multiple Strategy Heads that were located in Drug Development, Clinical Science, Commercial and Business Operations. However, everyone on the SI team and all Strategy Heads were either former consultants or market researchers, and many had experience in both areas. During my 1:1 meetings with these employees, I saw the same patterns exhibited by almost every person: They were all highly educated (MDs, PhDs, etc.), successful (several held high-ranking positions such as Engagement Manager within their firms) and were skillful and influential leaders that had been targeted, recruited and poached from outside firms.

Regarding its recent acquisitions, the company seemed to be responding to not only current pharmaceutical environment trends by establishing a footprint within different therapeutic areas for its portfolio, but also global economic trends by expanding into countries outside of its normal market. These decisions seem to be influence by highly capable people within the company, whose backgrounds in advising companies on corporate strategic decision have an impact on the high-risk decisions they must make today. I would be interested to see how they use the advancement of technology within healthcare and life sciences to improve their business model, whether they spin off an in-house technology firm (which they have done in the past, similar to the famous Skunk Works at Lockheed Martin) or if they continue their aggressive growth strategy by acquiring a medical/life sciences technology company, perhaps in one of the emerging markets listed in the McKinsey report (India, China, Africa, Southeast Asia).