Toying With Line Extensions to Generate Revenues: Have the Big Pharmas Lost Their Way?

The traditional heavyweights or big pharmas of the modern pharmaceutical industry are facing unprecedented challenges, primarily, in the form of drying product pipelines, expiry of patents of blockbuster drugs and swiftly declining margins on existing products. While service provision for revenue generation was the topic under investigation in the preceding project with the Established Business Unit division of Pfizer, the current report is an analysis of the industry itself, and dwells upon the environment, structure, products and fundamental motivations shaping this sector, and thereby, making it unique from other manufacturing sectors. In the final analysis, pharmaceutical companies must not move away from its “core” and should persevere to establish their competitive advantage by developing innovative, differentiated and patentable products. However, in order to do so companies must broaden their horizon, balance shareholder return against the huge unmet medical needs, and take advantage of the exciting opportunities that exist in the form of more educated consumers, advances in genomics and regulatory harmonization. In the face of growing threat from generics and biologics, the big pharmas should build effective collaborations with partners to accelerate innovation, reduce product and process costs,and mitigate non-compliance risks