Innovate or Perish: Managing the Enduring Technology Company in the Global Market

Conclusions

Bumpy Skies before Reaching Clear Air

In the early days of man’s attempt to defy the laws of gravity with winged flight, the only way to test early flying machines was literally to jump of a cliff. That hard-won experience, plus advances in every aspect of aeronautical engineering, physics, material sciences, propulsion units, CAD/CAM tools, and so on, made it a fairly safe bet that Airbus’s gargantuan new A380 airplane would safely take to the sky the first time out of the box in 2005. It did indeed perform flawlessly, a testament to the benefits of well-controlled innovation, tight design control processes, and thorough planning and execution. By analogy, the pharmaceutical industry is still emerging from the era of the single engine, open-cockpit, string-and-sealing-wax biplane—functional but unpredictable!

Remarkably, even with a century of experience, there is still a very high risk of drug-development projects falling over the proverbial cliff every time an investigational new drug enters clinical development. Biologics have generally fared better than small molecules, in terms of fallout rate due to safety concerns or lack of efficacy, during clinical development. This comfort zone was recently rocked when a Phase-one trial of a new immune modulator antibody went terribly wrong, with almost fatal consequences for six volunteers (Tegenero.com),

Confidence that a new aircraft will fly trouble free the first time lies in the fact that every aspect of design, construction ...