pushing the boundaries

I read recently that the cost of developing a drug lies between US800million to 1.2billion. Holy Crap! that's a hell lot of money for any molecular structures. Imagine, if all the pharma companies are to pool their R&D kitties together, its sufficient to bailout the troubled Wall street titans. Those banking fat cats ought to take a leaf out of pharma's compliance stance.

Anyways, before I digress into further naunces on the finance industry, 800 MILLION! obviously, that includes billions of petri dishes, thousands of bleached and starched lab coats, hundreds of centrifuges, top executive's bonuses, real estate costs and various other stuff that will just blow your mind off as it had done mine to splitereens.

This is the true reason why pharma remains a high-risk business. After deducting the huge costs of research, there is often no safety net in sight for the returns of investments until after the drug is launched for a period of time. With the increasing difficulty in approval filings lately, it is only going to chip chip chip into our patency period.

As any PM knows, managing the PLC of a drug is probably one of the most challenging given the brief lifespan of any chemical entity. so much bang is expected for the buck invested.

I advocate pushing the limits to achieve these market objectives. I mean, if the company is going to be investing 800M for that chance to make a difference -at least to shareholders- i dont see why we on the marketing floor have to adopt a play-it-safe approach in our competitive strategies or other marketing tactics that works to serve our objectives.

What's wrong with a little more aggression in sales and promotion? Obviously, its a rheotorical question. While I'm totally partial to appropriate corporate governance and the SAPI code, I'm simply jaded and unmotivated by all that abounds in the industry. It's pretty much monkey-see-monkey-do.

pharma promotion is so highly regulated and restrictive in Singapore that it is stifling any innovation or creativeness in the talent pool (what talent pool?!) I feel that failure to employ and engage into innovative ideas that is relevant to the marketplace will lead to a staid and improbable competitive environment, leading to non-attractive, repetitive activities or worse, a marketplace that competes only on price. That end serves nobody any good.