PATEGOU JOSEPH, International Strategy and Influence

The 8 best practices of Intelligence Masters within the pharmaceutical

industry

The pharmaceutical industry is a highly innovative industry and enjoys a very long time-to-

market span. Use of competitive intelligence goes in line with this constraint, as the drug firms highly

depend highly on long-term strategies, whose cycles are likely to change alongside the future

evolution of the market environment. For instance, developing a medicine may require 15 years to

cover all the value chain and many hundred millions of dollars to fulfill one step of the chain. Each

stage is critical in leading a product to success and faces many issues. In order to get a return on

investment, a drug should be ranked as one of the five leaders on the market (Xerfi 700). Indeed, the

R&D investments are massive while only few of the projects launched are successful. This means that

the successful ones eventually has to offset all the sunk costs implied by the failures. Consequently, it

is paramount for pharmaceutical companies to reduce the rate of failures and, then, maximize the

rate of successful innovation to be more profitable and competitive in the long run. Moreover, once

a company manages to compete with its peers, it needs to preserve its assets in the best conditions

to be sustainable.

Companies that master competitive intelligence which we decided to call Intelligence

Masters, outperform their peers.

Figure1: The 8 best practices of Intelligence Masters