Depressing Comments

Reactions to Pharma Innovation

These are some comments from the 15 March 04 piece on Pharmaceutical Innovation.

From Simon Harries in the UK

This is a fascinating article.

It confirms many of the thoughts that we must all surely have concerning the creative process:

namely that it is not susceptible to too much regulation.

How to learn these lessons in organisational terms, though?

How can you help to make a large business process more intuitive?

This is an interesting line of enquiry because it addresses some of the

conceptual problems that stopped people buying (for example) adaptive enterprise

in large amounts.

The need to allow a certain amount of anarchy into processes is

totally counter-intuitive for most executives,

unless some techniques for managing anarchy can also be introduced at the same time.

From Paul Erling in the US

This is an old problem that shows up in other contexts.

In the software patent world there are developers that run iterative processes

 that try to develop alternative methods for solving common software problems,

 and then patent them.

There is some guy who has filed thousands of patent applications,

generated by his Beowolf cluster running a process modelled on natural selection

 to propose alternative solutions.

It is called a genetic algorithm.  It doesn't involve a lot of intuition either.

This leads me to the parallel path that you claim Pharma is missing.

They aren't.

The other approach that you don't mention in Pharma is Genomics or Proteomics.

Here the roadmap to new products is a little clearer in theory

 and less dependant on rote processing.

Pharma contracts with companies like DeCode and Millenium to do genetic research.

The payoff is identifying specific reasons why people differ in both susceptibility to illness,

but also susceptibility to specific cures.

Right now this research mostly results in tests

for specific Genetic susceptibilities and Genetic Counselling,

not pills.

But there is a widespread belief

 that continued basic research

 into the interaction between Genes and Proteins

 will yield the kind of roadmap

 the pharmaceutical companies

 are trying to solve by rote testing.

The genetics research also has yielded results in the area of Stem Cells.

This is the parallel path you mention that NASA does,

and Pharma supposedly doesn't.

The Pharma companies may not be doing this inhouse, but DeCode wouldn't exist

if one or two big Pharma firms weren't contracting with them for research.