Pharma Strategy Blog

How cognitive surplus will change the world: Clay Shirky

Here's an interesting and informative TED video I just came across, where Clay Shirky talks about cognitive surplus and how it will change the world.

The idea behind the concept of "cognitive surplus" is that we use spare brain cycles while online to build a more cooperative world.  In other words, new technologies enable loose collaborations to evolve.

I'm not sure I like the term 'cognitive surplus' but Shirky is an eloquent, thoughtful and engaging speaker who is well worth listening to:

New Product Marketing

One of the things about oncology or any other therapeutic are new product development and marketing is that you get to spend a LOT of time at scientific congresses like AACR in DC the other week, which means early to rise and late to sleep:

Source: Personal iPhone - view of over the Potamac and Georgetown, DC from Arlington, VA. 

Anyone who thinks these meetings are junkets or jollies should join me on my schedule next trip;sometimes there isn't time to eat or by the time you do have a free slot it's too late.  Often, it means 18 hour days and a day back in the office is a relative rest.  There's always thought leaders to talk to, sessions to attend, media briefings, poster sessions (you can walk miles at those alone), plenaries etc, not to mention clients as well.  Fitting it all in makes for jam packed days.

The interesting thing about new data though, is that while trends may be obvious to those following the specific disease area, they are not to others.  I always find it amusing watching the teams of young things running around with their crib sheets frantically collecting poster handouts, rudely barging past people and trying to discreetly snap the posters without security catching them.  

In DC, I asked one what they did with all the data they amassed.  It turns out they just dump it all in a report for their client by whatever category seems apt.  No strategic analysis, what it all means or even trend spotting, just a data dump.  Ugh.

Sometimes less really is more.

Making things happen in Pharma land

With over a foot of snow overnight, Pharmaland is likely to be having another snow day in the New Jersey metro area.  

That's a good thing because not only will people be safe and sound off the roads in the manic rush hour, but they will also be more productive.

Why?  

Because meetings are cancelled and they'll get more done on important things or teleconferences without being driven by other people's agendas. And there will be fewer interruptions by colleagues practising management by walking around.

The bureaucracy in Pharma has always been bad, but lately I've noticed a lot more people complaining about it and things don't get done because there are so many processes and procedures to overcome.

During mergers, everyone turns inwards and started dealing with the consequences and implications of new colleagues, new teams, new processes or even debating this company's process over that one. Sometimes the end result is that not much gets done, or at least at a much slower pace, and people get frustrated.  

Process.  

One of my most hated words in the dictionary.  It gets in the way of getting things done, of making magical things happen.

At one of my clients a new colleague joined one of the teams I'm working with.  On a teleconference the other week, they asked the team, "what's the process for doing this?"

Someone, who had been in the company a longish time, piped up; "I don't know, we just do it around here!"  Everyone laughed and the conversation moved on.  A very true and apt statement that summed them up as a group.  They make great things move and working with them is a delight.

Many people, though, hide behind rules and process, obfuscating those who are focused on getting things done. Sometimes experience teaches you that common sense is often the best approach:

"What's the right thing to do for our customers/people/patients/team?"

Give me a sensible, hard working practical team focused on people than individuals bogged down in process any day. It's all about making a difference and making things happen, not hiding behind rules about why you can't do something.

As the snow continues to waft down, the shackles of the office are removed and things are getting done in Pharmaland.

We need more snow days :>}

Learnings from #ePharma conference

This week I attended the ePharma conference in Philadelphia and thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to catch up with Twitter buddies for some extended conversation and sharing of news and views. 

One of the challenges of Twitter is that it is hard to have extended discussions around topics of interest, which Friendfeed does very well, except that hardly anyone outside of tech or science geeks is on Friendfeed.  It was therefore really delightful to meet the regulars in the digital pharma space in person at the intimate gathering on Moshulu, kindly hosted by Pixels and Pills.  Lot's of interesting conversations evolved and set the tone for a productive conference.

Having heard from several folks that 2009 was a quiet one for pharma digital conferences, it was a big surprise to see this one packed to the gills.  Many of the attendees were from eMarketing departments, digital agencies or specialist groups. 

Clearly the buzz about social media is beginning to gain momentum in Pharmaland, but there is also a sense of frustration with lack of guidelines and the conservatism of internal review committees.  I couldn't help wondering if they were preaching to the converted; what would be nice is to see more brand marketers, legal and reulatory folks attend to learn more and gain comfort around what others are doing in the space.

Rather than do a review of all the sessions, as I'm sure others will do that most admirably, I going to look at a couple of concepts and trends that appealed to me.

Over the last couple of years, video has become a firm mainstay in the general public's imagination, largely as prices have come down for things like Flip cameras and with the ease of posting and sharing videos via platforms such as YouTube, Vimeo, Viddler etc virally through social media.  In the opening session, Paul Ivans from the organisers, IIR, pointed out that:

"Video accounts 34% of time people are online. But for health information, people want to read it."

Do they?  Or is it that the videos on health and medical information aren't yet in a digestible, easily understood level? Videos on Pharma channels get very low views, so this could be a reflection of general distrust about corporate Pharma, lack of viral marketing or disinterest in the information.  Ultimately, more granular research is needed to understand patient and consumer needs before things improve. 

The neat thing about video such as YouTube though, is that it is seamless on smart phones such as the iPhone or Droid.  If you have a YouTube video on your site or someone shares a link to a YouTube with you on Twitter or via email, clicking the play button or link takes you straight into YouTube to see it on your screen and allow you to share it with others if you like it.  More and more people are surfing the web on their smartphones, making mobile an important and rapidly growing aspect of marketing.  People are social creatures, they want to share something easily with their friends or relatives.

Recently, I've noticed how many brand or comporate sites are not optimised for mobile.  There's a great opportunity to improve your image right there.  It's relatively easy to do and yet has a huge impact.  Imagine how many doctors are searching for medical information daily on their smartphones while in a hospital?  Or a patient and friend are in the hospital waiting for tests having just been told by the doctor he/she has X.  One is in shock, the other starts to Google on their iPhone for basic information.  We've all been there.  Ivans went on to say:

"Digital marketing provides health information and support to consumers and HCPs, but Mobile unlocks the opportunity for improving outcomes."

Of course, the wags will chirp, "there's an app for that!" but after the diagnosis, researching the disease, treatments, side effect management etc, improved patient outcomes are indeed what the ultimate goal is for everyone.  The brands and companies that really start to understand and focus on this aspect of education are the ones that will do well in the long term.  It won't be easy though, because it takes a) deep understanding of the disease and patient needs and b) focused strategies rather than random and haphazard tactics.

Another theme I liked at this meeting was innovation.  Dennis Urbaniak from sanofi-aventis (a client company) emphasised strongly that innovation is not creativity or shiny object syndrome.  That was music to my ears - how many of us have sat through agency meetings hearing about about some new idea or tactic that they thought 'very creative/innovative/cool (substitute words of your choice)' and you're deep down you're really wondering,

"Hmmm yes, but what impact will it have, how will it help doctors/patients/advocacy groups (or whatever is the target audience), how will it change outcomes?  How does it fit in with our overall strategy and goals?  Does it integrate well and can it scale?  It might be pretty and win an award, but what if the target group doesn't find it useful? Then it's money down the drain."

Therein is the rub that Dennis was alluding to that marketers constantly wonder about: "is it relevant?" and offered 5 smart rules to live by:

1. Understand no matter how hard you try, you canʼt read your customerʼs minds. Donʼt pretend to.
2. Optimise your mix at the customer level not the brand level.
3. Respect channel preference and channel response, equally.
4. Apply predictive analytics as the foundation of your approach.
5. Content remains king. Channel optimization gets you in the game. Content optimization drives sustainable performance.

These ideas tally well with my own experience - broad ideas and tailored messages based on customer needs across multiple platforms always work better than isolated tactics with one set of messages on one channel, yet many marketers spend a lot of time and money trying to read customer's minds instead of gathering insights and using more intuition to make a bigger impact.  They forget that what people think they want today may be very different tomorrow.

In the end, great content is king, not tools and channels.  Relevance is ultimately about finding the tricky balance between expressed customer preferences and what people respond to.  How does this all fit together?  Urbaniak nailed it when he finished with:

"Let customers pick what they want and measure outcomes, then optimise progams accordingly." 

In other words, be clear on your true intent but let the customer drive the direction.  Predict, Project and Validate.

For many in Pharmaland senior management though, if they are insecure or unenlightened control freaks that might well be a very scary thought but new technologies are rapidly changing the landscape about how we communicate and interact.  We can adapt and change with them or die of ignorance.

Related articles by Zemanta

• #ePharma Annual Summit: leveraging innovative digital marketing strategies (pharmastrategyblog.com)
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ROI or ROR for business in Pharma

A lot of Pharma people often ask about the ROI or Return on Investment of new media, including social media.  The reality, though, is that it's a lot more complicated than that.

Why?

Because the value of any marketing or sales channel is more than just push marketing and measuring the impact on various metrics.  It's about building strong relationships in time, rather than investment in money.  My friend Rory Murray calls this "return on relationships".

Think about the experienced sales reps who have been seeing the same doctors for years, have built a network of relationships and generally hate marketing stuff.  They don't sell successfully from detail aids, they do well because the doctors have formed a relationship and like and trust them. 

The same thing happens in marketing and managed care. 

Remember those KOL's?  The brand that builds solid and strong relationships with the academic experts has more influence than the one that doesn't.  Doctors often buy on emotion, not logic.  Those who have good channel relationships in appropriate managed care areas do considerably better than those who don't, as Lilly found out to it's cost with Effient recently.

If you put all of those aspects together, you can see that a launch success or failure is almost predicted from the start.

So how can social media help? 

Well, think of it as a way of strengthening your online reputation; if you push stuff out there but don't engage, what does that tell customers and consumers about you?  Ultimately, that approach will weaken your image.  However, if you appear engaged, authentic, helpful and sincere then inevitably, people will have a more favourable impression.  This is why I like the way some Pharma Twitter accounts such as Roche and Boehringer interact with people.  They answer questions, provide information and generally do a nice job of being cheerful and responsive without being pushy. 

With others, though, it's like getting blood out of a stone. They don't seem to listen or interact and constantly push out stuff in a semi advertorial fashion; it's all about them, not the consumers or listeners.  Of course, that approach has influenced my opinion of the company and its products more negatively.

Rory recently posted a short presentation, which I highly recommend.  Take a quick look at what he has to say:

ROR = Social Media’s ROI

View more presentations from Rory Murray.

In an increasingly networked world, we can see that the new currency is becoming time and relationships, rather than money and investments.

What do you think?

Shifting gears: another year in Pharma and Biotech

As the New Year begins and everyone shifts gears after the two week break over the Holidays, I realised a few things that were relevant to me personally.  This year will mark my 7th seventh year in consulting, six of those running Icarus.  Is it really that long?  Wow.

Over time, this has become a blessing because while consultants come and go 'in between jobs', we're still here providing longevity and reassurance that a relationship is there for the long haul and not as flash in the pan merchants.

That's a good thing and a bad thing though.  Those that stand still will not grow but be left behind.  You have to keep innovating and creating to survive in this world.  Reliability is also important, but delivering value and intelligent insight and analysis rather than mere data is what most of our customers seem to want and need.

The other day, someone asked me why we read a lot of scientific papers as well as going to so many conference and meetings.  The answer is that's how we stay ahead of current and future trends, new ideas and innovation.  It's a lot of data to shift through but then, that's what clients want: more than they understand themselves, as no one wants to hear what they already know back.

Still, I have a long list of lot's of interesting concepts and ideas to discuss on this blog in 2010, some new, some reinvention of old ideas in different guises, some yet to reveal their true results (from phase III studies) at conferences such as AACR, ASCO and ASH.  It will be fascinating to see what new technologies and pipeline drugs emerge as real new advances in their area.  Somehow, the New Year also brings a renewed sense of urgency and hope quite unlike any other month in the year.

Last week, I was browsing through company pipelines and was struck at how little is ready for market this year, with many phase III projects probably not maturing until 2011.  2010 may well be the year of consolidation in Pharma and Biotech, where many companies take stock and get ready for a big push in 2011, when the biggest patent expiries are most likely to hit. There's a few expected this year too, though, as Pharma Gossip nicely highlighted this morning.

January promises to be a busy start to the year:

1. It heralds many companies presenting year end reviews and their forward look at 2010.  I'll be keeping an eye on these and observing any new trends as they come out.  
2. The AACR-IASLC joint conference on Lung Cancer is also being held later this month from 11-14th Jan in San Diego (details here and here), so if anyone wants to meet up for networking then, let me know.  There's a lot on pathways, stem cells, genome-wide approaches, as well as models for earlier detection, so it should be a very interesting meeting.

In the meantime, we also have a stack of client reports due, proposals to write, phone calls and email enquiries to return etc... sound familiar?  

Ok, let's roll!  

Welcome back everyone, a wonderful New Year to y'all.

PS 

If you enjoy reading this blog, do avail yourselves of a free subscription, delivered to you inbox or News Page by clicking on the Subscription link at the top of the page or the email button in the top right.

Impact of the OIG guidelines on Pharma and Biotech

One of the most noticeable changes at the American Society of Hematology meeting this weekend was the impact of banning chotchkes and giveaways for health care professionals in the US:

1. Traffic in the exhibition hall was noticeably slow, except for a couple of booths
2. The booths were much smaller
3. Pharma companies provided more medical information staff and fewer sales reps
4. With the lack of credit and high cost of the booths, several small biotechs were also noticeably absent

Of course, when you needed a pen to jot something urgent down, none was to be found.  I tried switching to the notepad on the iPhone to record a name and phone number and managed to drop the call twice.  Oops.

Talking to several oncologist and hematologists in the exhibit hall about the topic was interesting.  Getting pounced on by desperate or bored reps trying to promote something is never pleasant.  They don't want to collect tonnes of paper based clinical trial and medical information when a flash key is smaller and easier to manage/access later. Of course, several Pharma companies defensive response was that legal had taken a draconian position of ultra conservatism and declared flash keys chotchkes and therefore not allowed under any circumstances.

Several of the booths had interesting interactive tools for browsing clinical trials or their pipeline for useful information.  The problem was, you could only see it on the screen, no printouts or downloadable files of any kind, rendering the fancy program pretty but totally useless and impractical.

Here's some ideas they could have considered:

• Mini CD's or flash keys with relevant medical or clinical trials information on them for later use.
• Interactive tools for case based management enquiries, which allow the doctors to sign up and ask an expert peer for advice on patients via email, video or phone later.
• Ditto, but have materials available in label that the sales reps can deliver offline post meeting.
• Ditto, but information based on ongoing company clinical trials with a visit from the MLSO.  This would encourage more trial participation in US or EU co-operative studies.
• Incorporating social media programs that foster engagement and dialogue between peers to improve patient outcomes.
• Sign up to have specific medical information enquiries about data presented at the meeting answered via SMS or email with a protected link to relevant clinical information from the medical affairs department.
• Create useful and interesting medical iPhone and Droid apps such the excellent BlackBag news one that J&J did (but wasn't in evidence at the ASH meeting) so doctors can play with a demo at the booth and request an email with a link to the app for later downloading and use.

The ideas are endless, if applied creatively.  

What was marketing thinking just creating loads of glossy paper based brochures no one wanted to carry home or destroy the forests?  Or all those ads on light boxes pushing the name of your product?

Instead, Pharma seems slow to change from old media (print) and push marketing (DTC, ads) to more useful interactive PDA apps or digital tools, yet the vast majority of doctors were walking around with PDA's and using them constantly.  A wasted opportunity to interact and build deeper relationships with your most important customers in many ways.

Maybe it's time for the industry to run syndicated surveys at a neutral booth to learn what health care professionals attending their annual meeting actually want or need?  They can then tailor future programs to what the customers want.

For me, I'm mourning the loss of flash keys, the single most useful giveaway I can get hold of yet can never get enough of.

Using video in social media to bring science and biotechnology alive

One of the cool things about social media is the sharing of things that interest you with others.  Sending links to people on Twitter or Facebook, for example, is much easier and more user-friendly than sending an email these days.

One such example is this short YouTube video that Mary Canady of Comprendia sent me where David Welch of Whitecoat Strategies explains how they use the video medium to help explain complex things in science more simply and visually:

The beauty of video is that it can be used effectively to communicate all sorts of ideas, whether they are for PR, communication, promotion or education purposes and of course, you can have dialogue and engagement on a YouTube post itself or through blog posts like this one. Ultimately, it is about relationships with people, not push channel marketing. 

A number of Pharma companies already have YouTube channels, including J&J and Novartis.  sanofi-aventis, meanwhile, have their own online tv channel, which has some neat videos on the drug discovery process, for example, but nowhere to engage and comment that I can see.

The power of video to help Pharma and Biotechnology companies provide better medical education and awareness, let alone engage with people is still a much underused and underestimated tool out there.

You can also see some cool real life examples the guys at Whitecoat have done on their website.

Who else is using video or do you have some other examples to share?

Do feel free to comment below if you know of any great examples!

How to find Icarus Consultants on the internet

Last week a client left a message asking me how they could find me online as they had misplaced my email address and our website is pointing to this blog while we upgrade the shop window.  It was tempting to leave a message saying "Google it" but instead it gave me food for thought.

For starters, like many, I'm around on all sorts of social media and science sites as well as professional business ones too. 

Here's a small selection, for example:

   

In addition, we also have a number of blogs other than this one, which have just restarted after an extended hiatus due to pressures of work (hey, it's always nice to be seriously in demand) on the following topics:

Pharma Market Strategy

Market Trends

Technology and Insights

Hematology Market Insights

Competitive Intelligence

They will all be getting fresh new looks soon, along with our website, so watch this space as Icarus Consultants is going places!!

Are Pfizer's plans to accelerate clinical research too little?

It is hoped that through the new collaboration with Private Access, the innovator of privacy-enhanced search technology, Pfizer will be able to bolster patient participation in clinical trials. The proposed online community is set to focus on patient privacy rights, connecting patients, physicians and researchers with tailored information, tools and technology that will lead to more informed decisions about healthcare, including clinical trial participation industry-wide. It will be the first of its kind and is being lavished in praise.

via ngpharma.com

Part of the challenge with clinical trial accrual is patient awareness, so it will be interesting to see how this initiative goes and whether or not it will have a positive impact.

Of course, there are plenty of clinical trial resources already out there including the big guns such as  NIH/NCI site and  Center Watch, which have an extensive database of broad diseases or the smaller, niche players such as Healogica and others, but new ways of driving awareness are always welcome.  For interested patients, the Private Access trial finder can ber found here. 

Posted via web from MaverickNY

Creating Pharma strategy on the fly

Sometimes when you sit down with clients you have no idea when conversations may end up or what creative projects may evolve from them.  Years ago, I abandoned the dreaded death by Powerpoint where possible, and used Apple's Pages or Keynote to develop more interesting materials, but as handouts at the end of the meeting rather than a crutch to talk from.

It's an old tried and tested technique from my sales days, where I discovered more business could be got when I engaged and chatted with the doctors rather than trying to read from a fancy detail aid with small print upside down.

This strategy has several effects:

1) People loosen up

2) Everyone is engaged and boredom is banished

3) You discuss and brainstorm real live problems and issues to create potential solutions

4) It's much more fun!

Image via Wikipedia

When clients are amenable to this approach, especially over lunch or in the cafeteria over coffee rather than a dreary office or conference room, you end up with sketches on napkins or scraps of paper and a greater chance of buy-in when you send in a proposal. 

Talking about social media strategy and how you can go from baby steps to some real projects that add value while offering a good strategic fit with current company and brand goals is very rewarding.  Everybody wins.

My general conclusion is that bottom up strategy driven by end users gets much more buy-in and acceptance from an organisation than top down directives, guidelines and rules. 

What's your experience?

Are Pharma market or sales driven organisations?

This morning, I was reflecting on one of my favourite quotes from the Wharton business school marketing professor, George Day, who said:

“At the heart of a market-driven organization is the deep and enduring commitment to the philosophy that the customer comes first.”

It's also a strategic goal that many of us have strived for because ultimately, if you focus on your customers, the rest will take care of itself, including revenues.

Money follows satisfaction.

Back in my Pharma days, we listened to our customers and patients almost every single day.  We learned how they felt about the disease, the treatments, the company and even our brand while it was undergoing clinical trials.  Patients are wonderful and tell you how well (or not) they are responding, what side effects they have and what their hopes and aspirations are.

Adverse events?

I can hear Pharma having wobblies right now at the mention of side effects.  But they aren't always bad things, sometimes that knowledge is valuable insight.

How so, you might ask?

Well, imagine a world where people talk openly about their rashes, their swellings, their headaches, their muscle aches and pains etc.  We can empathise with those things because no drug is free of side effects and we've all experienced them at some point ourselves when we take our own prescriptions.  Suppose you take those shared thoughts as valuable real life insights and also ask the KOL's what they are seeing in the trials too?  You then put a big picture together and realise that actually, many of them are uncomfortable, but manageable.  Strategically, it makes sense to put adverse events in context for everyone in a rational, fair balanced way.

What next?

Imagine taking these insights and working with your clinical and medical affairs teams and the investigators to devise a practical guide for side effect management for patients, advocacy groups and other doctors in the broader community via practical patient brochures and clinical papers.  Your review team loves education rather than promotion, so do your stakeholders.  You now have a proactive strategy and executable tactics working together to help patients and doctors with potential outlets across multiple areas of the organisation.

That's marketing, not sales.

The patient insights I'm talking about came from social media sites.  Yes, the same social media that everyone seems to get in a tizzy about.

Why is that?

When you stop and think, it's not entirely adverse events per se.  It's often the risk that deep down, some review teams are worried that some brands are more focused on sales and promotion than marketing or education.  They're probably right in that assumption sometimes, but it isn't true for everyone.  Some are pragmatic and focused on common sense.

Action speaks louder than words.

Respect is something that is earned, from actions, from programs, from interactions.  So, if the review team is up in arms, ask yourself why?  Are you truly coming from a strategic and educational perspective based on insights and customer feedback or are you trying to use social media as yet another channel for more tactical push marketing and promotion?

It doesn't always have to be that way.

Some of the greatest moments I ever had in Pharma came from sitting down with patients hearing their personal stories about life, despair and hope or attending an advisory committee of patients, physicians, advocacy groups and others, hearing their perspectives and what they thought at the same table, even though I vehemently disagreed with some of them.  We debated, we listened, we problem solved, we created joint strategies and we created solutions.  Together.  It was a truly amazing experience.  

Openess, listening, insights, collaboration, impact.

What you learn from your customers and consumers in real life in real time is invaluable.  Forget the dingy market research focus groups and hiding behind dark windows; get out, listen, talk to doctors and patients.  Prof Day was bang on the money, but the problem is, many of us have to do it to see and believe it. 

It's absolutely a life changing experience for a marketer though, and once you see the tangible benefits to your brand and organisation, you never want to go back but you do want to make more of a difference to patients lives. 

Medical and science blogging

This is an interesting slideshow on medical blogging, but many of the comments are just as apt for science blogging too:

Examining the Medical Blogosphere: An Online Survey of Medical Bloggers

View more Microsoft Word documents from Ivor Kovic.

On a related theme, the recent Pew report raised some interesting statistics:

"61% of American adults look online for health information."

I'm only surprised it was as low as 61%.  When asked:

"Now thinking about all the sources you turn to when you need information or assistance in dealing with health or medical issues, please tell me if you use any of the following sources...

• 86% of all adults ask a health professional, such as a doctor. 
• 68% of all adults ask a friend or family member.
• 57% of all adults use the internet. 
• 54% use books or other printed reference material. 
• 33% contact their insurance provider. 
• 5% use another source not mentioned in the list."

Overall, 37% of adults, or 60% of e-patients, have done at least one of the above activities.  But what of social networking sites?  Typically, they were used sparingly for health enquiries or updates, according to the Pew Report, but it wasn't clear how they defined social networking.  In the same breath, the report noted that:

"Health consumers are often looking for tailored information, searching for a “just-in-time someone-like-me.”  For example:

• 41% of e-patients have read someone else's commentary or experience about health or medical issues on an online news group, website, blog.
• 24% of e-patients have consulted rankings or reviews online of doctors or other providers. 
• 24% of e-patients have consulted rankings or reviews online of hospitals or other medical facilities. 
• 19% of e-patients have signed up to receive updates about health or medical issues.
• 13% of e-patients have listened to a podcast about health or medical issues."

Blogs by most people's definition would probably come under social media, but likely Pew are referring to platforms such as MySpace, Facebook, etc when then mention social media.

One of the things I've noticed in business is that people buy from people; what Rory Murray has described as ROR, or Return on Relationships.  In other words, you are more likely to do business with someone you like, trust and respect.  The same goes for online interactions - trust in the form of trusted media or trusted links becomes the new currency.  As new tools such as Twitter become more widely used, we will likely see a subtle change in how and where people find and seek information via their trusted network of contacts.

This is an inevitable shift as the internet moves towards a more open web, where information is freely traded, but the reputation and earned currency still must be earned, whether you are sharing information about science, medicine or indeed, any form of information.  This applies to professionals such as physicians as well as to organisations such as Pharma and Biotech companies.  In this day and age authority is simply not taken for granted any more.

Blog roll widgets

One of the interesting things I came across recently was Robert Scoble's impromptu video interview of Fred Wilson where they were discussing current and near term web trends.

Aside from real time information, the thing that struck me was actually a neat little web2.0 widget that Fred mentioned from his own blog, which I read regularly but had not noticed, called Blogrollr. Now, rather than have a typical static blog roll that you have to keep updating, Fred asked the audience on his forum whether anyone knew of a more dynamic solution that shared with his readers what he was reading.  Up came the suggestion of Blogrollr and so I thought it was time to try it out on this blog, which has a lot of medical content and see what emerged.

This was the result after I set mine up yesterday and let it run for a day to see what I actually browse:

You can let it record all RSS feeds, but I chose to select Technorati registered sites, which would mean blogs rather than any website.  The reason for this is that I do a fair bit of competitive intelligence and confidential research for Pharma clients, so it would not be appropriate to reveal that information publicly.

The biggest problem I've experienced so far was clicking on a single item for some blogs in my Google Reader and the widget displayed the last 20 or 30 items, whereas in reality, I only clicked on the home page of the blog and exited after reading the most recent post.  A little disconcerting perhaps, as was finding that some corporates had clearly registered their websites, so they were unfortunately showing up along with the blogs I did want to see displayed.  I may need to do a little tweaking, but will try it and see how it goes.

My hope is that the Blogrollr will be a living breathing record of what I browse and change over time.  It will be interesting to see how the longitudinal analysis works out.  At the moment, you can see the widget in this blog post above, but I hope to have it up in the left margin this week once I have figured out how to do that in Typepad.  Whether it will be useful or not, I'm not sure yet, providing I can hide websites and only show blogs, I'll be happy.

What do you think? Anyone else using it?

A life in the day of a Pharma marketing strategy consultant...

Recently, a client asked what a typical day as a management consultant is like compared to being in big Pharma.  That's a good question, because although much of the work is similar, the work flow is very different indeed.

The three things I absolutely do NOT miss are the perpetual cycle of endless meetings to address someone else's crisis, the politics and insane travel schedule that takes up every other weekend.  For some reason, politics is sadly rather prevalent in Pharma.  That said though, the huge advantages of running your own company is that a) you are the boss b) you don't have to stress about a twice daily commute that eats up time and c) with all your associates working remotely, every one gets on with their work and doesn't have to worry about keeping up appearances like Mrs Bucket or getting sucked into meetings and politics.

The things I do miss, however, are the water cooler chats about industry news and happenings, how they affect your franchise and what you might need to do about them.  Most of us are social creatures so human interaction is important.

Another cool thing about consulting is that you get to balance getting out to seeing clients and potential clients with days in the home office (sometimes the garden table in nice weather, that can't be beat, although the birds chirping is a dead giveaway on phone calls) either beavering away on research and reports or doing business development.  Until becoming a consultant, I hated the telephone and avoided it like the plague as colleagues who encountered a full VM box will attest.  As a consultant it is a central part of the day, so I have grown to love my Bluetooth gadget that works so seamlessly with the iPhone.  It really has revolutionised my life, especially with all the useful apps that allow you to share data across computers to the cloud.

So what does a typical week look like in Pharma? 

Arrive, grab coffee while the network takes an eternity to boot, do VM and attempt to answer some emails, rush off to meetings while wondering while such meetings exist. Debate between grabbing a late hasty lunch at desk and attempt a few more emails and VMs or sit down for half an hour with colleagues.  Get back to office, but get pulled into another meeting.  Then your assistant reminds you about a meeting with a vendor you forgot about. It is 3.30pm and you wonder where the day has gone.  Finally get some 'me' time to do some real work.  Colleagues pop in and out with questions or wanting a chat.  Finally leave the office later than you hoped and dice with the tail end of the rush hour traffic.  Arrive home stressed and tired, needing to do some more work after dinner and pack for a 6.30am flight to some conference the next morning.

Sound familiar?

Last week was a typical one for me.  A couple of days working on client projects, all in different diesases and cancers with different outputs, two days of business meetings, a day of business development and administration, including working on the concept for a new brochure on forecasting.  The only travel was to client or supplier meetings, no daily commute and no wasted time.  This week is similar, more work to finish, some client/prospect meetings, some short teleconferences and travel to the ASCO conference in Orlando.  The end result is less stress, more fun, but also more uncertainty.  At least working for a Pharma company guarantees a regular paycheck every month, consulting does not. 

Time is more focused as a consultant, less waste and less meetings.  Oh, but it's not all hunky dory: I'm still bad at expenses though, please excuse me while I dash and catch up on three months worth before the next major conference hits.  Unfortunately, some things never change.

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