Monday, August 2, 2010

Collaboration, Storytelling: Potent Potions for Pharmaceutical


By Vicki Powers

Research and development spending in the pharmaceutical industry has jumped 43% since 1995, according to the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association of America (PhRMA), even though new drug approvals have dropped 49%. All of that contributes to an extremely competitive environment where shaving years, or even months, off the average 12- to 15-year drug product development cycle can create huge returns.

Knowledge management is critical in the pharmaceutical industry, according to Carla O'Dell, president of the Houston-based American Productivity & Quality Center, because its product is actually "bottled knowledge." The industry emerged as an early adopter of knowledge management in the mid- to late-1990s but ended up focusing too much on intellectual capital and codification, rather than knowledge transfer and collaboration. Many of those organizations backed off their KM activities for a few years, according to O'Dell, and lost ground.

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