Business Concepts for Biomedical Scientists: Business Strategy

Part 1: Value Proposition

00:00:11.17 Hi, and welcome to business concepts for
00:00:14.23 life sciences strategy course.
00:00:16.16 I am Deb Dauber, I have a PhD from UCSF
00:00:19.14 and I'm currently a competitive analysis consultant.
00:00:21.24 And I'll be taking you through part one of this
00:00:23.23 course. Here are the course objectives.
00:00:25.28 By the end of class today,
00:00:27.20 you should be able to
00:00:28.17 one, define strategy and how scientific
00:00:31.06 enterprises use strategy.
00:00:32.13 Two, identify the value proposition
00:00:35.11 of a scientific enterprise.
00:00:36.21 Three, determine key stakeholders
00:00:39.10 for a scientific enterprise.
00:00:40.13 And four, discuss how organizational context
00:00:43.19 impacts budget and resource allocation.
00:00:46.02 Let's start by defining what a scientific enterprise
00:00:49.21 is. For the purposes of this course, we'll be using
00:00:52.17 some scientific enterprise to describe both research
00:00:54.19 labs in academia, as well as companies in a business
00:00:57.25 setting, as an umbrella term. Because we know that
00:01:00.26 you're interested in both settings.
00:01:03.06 What is strategy? Strategy is a term
00:01:05.00 that's often used and rarely defined.
00:01:06.28 Either in the business setting or in
00:01:08.25 academia. Strategy is how a scientific enterprise
00:01:11.18 plans to conduct activities in order
00:01:14.00 to achieve a set of overarching goals.
00:01:15.27 Or put more simply,
00:01:17.09 strategy is where the enterprise would like to be
00:01:20.05 in the long-term and how they plan to get there.
00:01:21.25 The purpose of the strategy
00:01:23.27 is to help guide decisions, and establish
00:01:26.17 boundaries on the scope of work.
00:01:28.12 Or in other words, to make sure
00:01:30.05 that the day to day activities are
00:01:32.07 taking that enterprise in the right direction long-term.
00:01:35.01 Now strategy may be formulated
00:01:40.09 differently depending on the context.
00:01:41.19 So for example, in biotechnology, the strategy
00:01:44.26 will describe how the company plans to achieve
00:01:47.06 their clinical goals, as well as their financial
00:01:48.28 goals. Whereas in academia, the strategy
00:01:51.19 may determine what research questions the lab
00:01:53.28 wants to pursue and what grants they decide
00:01:56.02 to apply for.
00:01:57.24 There are two foundational concepts
00:01:59.29 to understand when thinking about
00:02:01.24 strategy. The first is value proposition.
00:02:04.20 The value proposition describes the technology
00:02:07.20 of that enterprise and the value that it has
00:02:09.23 within the market of that enterprise.
00:02:11.18 Second, organizational context describes the enterprise
00:02:14.27 itself, what are its capabilities, its structure,
00:02:17.19 its funding, et cetera.
00:02:18.23 What are the limitations of that
00:02:20.23 enterprise within the context of what they'd like
00:02:23.00 to get done. Together, these two pieces of
00:02:26.04 information drive the context in which
00:02:29.08 a company or enterprise can form a strategy.
00:02:31.14 I'm going to start by talking about value
00:02:34.09 proposition in this part of the presentation,
00:02:36.18 and then Sandy Ruggles will come in
00:02:38.25 and talk about both organizational context
00:02:40.22 and strategy in part two.
00:02:42.18 So let's talk more about value proposition.
00:02:45.02 There are three core questions that drive
00:02:47.17 the creation of value proposition.
00:02:48.27 The first question here is why?
00:02:51.20 Why is the work important?
00:02:53.04 What is unique about the technology or product being made?
00:02:57.10 And finally, who has a stake in the outcomes?
00:02:59.15 And importantly, what do those people value most?
00:03:02.22 Let's start with the why.
00:03:04.22 Why is the work important?
00:03:06.10 Well, ideally, a scientific enterprise
00:03:08.17 is looking to meet a market need.
00:03:11.01 That's a gap, that something is missing from the marketplace.
00:03:14.15 In the world of health, this could be a drug,
00:03:17.07 a disease that has absolutely no drug to treat it.
00:03:19.29 In the world of science, this may be an unanswered
00:03:22.06 scientific question. There are a couple different
00:03:24.17 forms of market need. One option on meeting
00:03:27.11 market need would be to meet an unmet need.
00:03:29.04 This would be an example, as I mentioned earlier,
00:03:31.17 a disease with absolutely no treatment available
00:03:33.24 today. Alternatively, the goal may be
00:03:36.13 to build a better mousetrap.
00:03:37.26 Perhaps there are treatments for that disease
00:03:39.16 today, but they're not very safe.
00:03:42.00 They cause toxicity and a company may
00:03:44.01 set out to create very similar drugs but with
00:03:46.28 less toxicity for the patients.
00:03:48.20 Similarly in the generic market,
00:03:50.05 a company may set out to make
00:03:51.29 exactly the same product that's available
00:03:53.23 already, but they can make it for cheaper,
00:03:55.25 they will sell it for cheaper, voila!
00:03:57.18 You have generic drugs.
00:03:58.20 Here's an example of a company that
00:04:02.00 was founded based on the why.
00:04:03.13 Why is this important?
00:04:05.01 Akashi Therapeutics is a very small
00:04:07.11 biopharmaceutical company that was
00:04:09.23 founded with the mission to develop treatments
00:04:12.16 for Duchenne muscular dystrophy and
00:04:13.24 other rare pediatric diseases.
00:04:15.11 Let me tell you about Duchenne muscular dystrophy,
00:04:17.24 it's a particularly debilitating form of this disease,
00:04:20.15 it's hereditary, and hits boys only. It puts them in a wheelchair
00:04:24.27 by their teenage years and they end up dying very
00:04:27.08 early. Currently the only treatment
00:04:29.14 for Duchenne muscular dystrophy is steroids,
00:04:32.00 which are not fun to take and also slow the disease
00:04:35.02 only minorly at best.
00:04:36.13 Akashi recognizes that this is a need and
00:04:39.21 their long-term goal is to be able to provide
00:04:42.13 better treatments, or even a cure, for Duchenne
00:04:44.18 muscular dystrophy. They're a why company.
00:04:46.13 Our second question is what.
00:04:49.01 What is unique about the technology?
00:04:51.09 Now the first question I'm going to ask about
00:04:53.09 the technology is, what is its efficacy?
00:04:55.08 Does it work? This is a critical question
00:04:57.18 and this is a pay to play question.
00:04:59.23 Because if the technology doesn't work,
00:05:01.10 the enterprise either needs to find
00:05:02.23 a new technology or shutter their doors,
00:05:05.11 because there's no progress forward with the technology
00:05:07.07 that doesn't work. Clearly.
00:05:08.23 But there are a couple other questions we can ask
00:05:10.14 about the technology that help you understand
00:05:13.11 if this is a good long-term strategy
00:05:15.22 or not. First of all, what's the potential
00:05:18.07 for portfolio growth?
00:05:19.16 Is this technology a single drug
00:05:21.19 to treat a single disease
00:05:23.15 that's never going to grow to be anything more.
00:05:25.03 That's a very small portfolio.
00:05:27.15 But the technology may be a platform
00:05:29.17 that can be used to develop many different drugs.
00:05:31.18 Or it may be one drug that once it shows proof
00:05:34.04 of concept can actually be used
00:05:35.21 to treat many diseases. Those are both
00:05:37.28 great strategies to build a larger portfolio
00:05:40.11 in the long run. The second question is
00:05:43.02 what is the competition today?
00:05:44.18 What other enterprises have similar technology
00:05:47.04 that may be used in similar ways?
00:05:49.05 And how do the technologies compare to
00:05:51.02 each other. Does the enterprise you're interested
00:05:53.02 in have a technology that's an advantage
00:05:55.14 in some way shape or form, relative to
00:05:57.17 its competition?
00:05:59.02 The third question is about barriers to
00:06:01.11 entry for future competition.
00:06:02.24 Does the enterprise have a patent
00:06:05.15 or a world expert or a trade secret
00:06:08.02 that makes it difficult for a future competitor
00:06:10.16 to come in with similar technology
00:06:12.14 and work towards the same goals.
00:06:14.15 Or, is there going to be competition in the future?
00:06:16.22 Let's take an example of a what company.
00:06:20.19 And here I'm going to look at Catalyst Biosciences.
00:06:22.27 Now you'll hear a little bit more about Catalyst later
00:06:25.01 on, because Sandy Ruggles worked there early in
00:06:28.00 her career. I'm just going to talk about when they were
00:06:30.15 founded. Catalyst was founded as a what company
00:06:33.02 with a technology platform of protease
00:06:35.08 engineering. Catalyst scientists believed they had
00:06:37.25 a great new technology that they could use
00:06:40.13 to engineer or select proteases to hit
00:06:43.08 novel disease targets.
00:06:44.29 They were founded as a technology company because
00:06:48.00 they were looking at a wide sort of diseases
00:06:49.12 with one kind of technology.
00:06:51.00 So we've talked about two different ways
00:06:55.06 to start building a strategy. One is a need
00:06:58.10 based strategy, or why.
00:07:00.21 And the other is a technology based
00:07:01.25 strategy, or what.
00:07:03.08 Whichever way an enterprise starts,
00:07:05.12 they need to ask both questions.
00:07:07.23 So a why company needs to get to the what
00:07:10.15 at some point early on.
00:07:12.16 And a what company needs to get to the why
00:07:14.10 at some point early on.
00:07:15.13 And both Akashi and Catalyst
00:07:18.20 should've done this.
00:07:19.08 So Akashi founded to find treatments for
00:07:22.00 Duchenne muscular dystrophy went out
00:07:24.19 and identified the rights to compounds
00:07:26.25 they felt would be promising treatments for
00:07:28.22 Duchenne muscular dystrophy and are now
00:07:30.13 working on developing those compounds.
00:07:31.27 Catalyst started with an interesting platform
00:07:36.01 to engineer novel proteases, reviewed a wide set
00:07:40.08 of disease states, identified those disease states
00:07:43.09 they felt would make the best targets for their proteases,
00:07:45.17 and are now selecting and developing products
00:07:48.07 in their market.
00:07:49.19 So we've been talking about the why
00:07:52.13 and the what, but those two together
00:07:54.07 are meaningless if you don't also think
00:07:55.29 about the stakeholders. Who has a vested
00:07:58.15 interest in the outcomes of the scientific
00:08:00.15 enterprise. And specifically, what do they value?
00:08:03.04 What's important to them?
00:08:04.28 As a little thought exercise, I want you
00:08:07.07 to take a few moments to think about
00:08:09.12 whether it be in a lab setting or a biotech setting
00:08:11.25 some stakeholders that have a vested interest
00:08:14.17 in the outcome of an enterprise.
00:08:16.04 If you've been thinking about an academic lab,
00:08:19.09 here's some example of stakeholders you may
00:08:21.08 have been thinking about. They range from students
00:08:23.08 in the lab to peer researchers outside of the lab,
00:08:26.04 all the way to granting agencies that fund the work
00:08:28.15 being done in the lab. And as you can see
00:08:30.07 in this slide, I've started to group the stakeholders
00:08:32.19 into sets of common interests.
00:08:34.15 For instance, students, postdocs, and lab managers,
00:08:37.13 can all be grouped together as employees of the lab
00:08:39.26 because they all have a vested interest in the overall body
00:08:42.12 of work being done in the lab, whether or not
00:08:44.10 they're doing every last little bit of the research.
00:08:46.16 I can even take a step bigger
00:08:48.11 and group these stakeholders into internal versus
00:08:50.13 external stakeholders, based on where they
00:08:52.20 are relative to the lab.
00:08:55.02 Now the grouping is really helpful because
00:08:57.05 as enterprise creates its strategy, it may not
00:09:00.04 want to develop a strategy for every single group
00:09:02.14 of stakeholders. By grouping, it can set strategies
00:09:05.17 for groups of stakeholders, instead. Making
00:09:07.07 the work a little bit simpler.
00:09:08.27 This complexity gets even more critical
00:09:10.25 when you think about pharma industry
00:09:13.04 stakeholders. As you can see on the lab,
00:09:15.06 it gets very complex. Now we still have
00:09:18.03 employees as a group on this lab. And we
00:09:19.21 still have funders, although on this slide, we're
00:09:22.09 now calling them investors.
00:09:23.16 There's still the people funding the work
00:09:25.22 being done in the lab. Now we have new
00:09:27.29 levels of complexity, and I want to really
00:09:30.15 zoom in on the customers
00:09:32.14 group of stakeholders. Customers for the pharma
00:09:35.09 industry could include providers,
00:09:36.25 patients, or payers. And each of those groups
00:09:40.09 have very different interests, with respect to
00:09:42.08 the company and the drugs it's selling.
00:09:43.28 And even within each of those
00:09:45.19 subcategories, I can divide it down further.
00:09:47.25 For instance, a provider could be a doctor
00:09:50.02 or a nurse, or it could be a pharmacist. Or a
00:09:52.20 provider could be a hospital or even a hospital
00:09:54.14 system. So you can see this group
00:09:56.17 of customer stakeholders is a very,
00:09:59.01 very complex set of people and as you might
00:10:01.08 imagine, pharma companies spend a lot of
00:10:03.06 time thinking about their strategy
00:10:04.27 with respect to each of those customer stakeholder groups.
00:10:07.05 Why do we care about stakeholders?
00:10:12.08 We care because it's their perception
00:10:14.20 of the enterprise and the work being
00:10:16.12 done that creates value. And each of these
00:10:18.27 stakeholder groups value things differently.
00:10:20.27 Let me start with patients, a drug company,
00:10:23.13 with the drug company as the enterprise,
00:10:25.20 the patient cares very much about the drug
00:10:27.18 that they're buying. They care about the efficacy
00:10:30.16 and safety of that drug. They care about the
00:10:32.19 convenience of that drug. And of course
00:10:34.22 they care about the cost and how much they
00:10:36.07 have to pay for the drug. Think about investors,
00:10:39.02 an investor cares about all those
00:10:40.20 things, but they care about it on the portfolio
00:10:42.12 level. They care about how robust is the
00:10:44.24 portfolio, how much revenue is the portfolio
00:10:48.12 bringing in today, and what's the stability
00:10:50.02 and growth of that portfolio long-term?
00:10:52.02 Employees on the other hand,
00:10:54.00 care in some ways about all of those things,
00:10:56.09 but they also really care about the mission
00:10:58.23 of the company and what is being done.
00:11:01.25 Because they spend a lot of time there,
00:11:03.19 so they want to be excited and proud of the work
00:11:05.23 that they do. They care about the culture
00:11:07.22 because they spend a lot of time at that company
00:11:09.22 every day. And of course, they care about
00:11:11.28 the long-term sustainability of the company, as well.
00:11:13.21 Because this is their livelihood and they want to
00:11:16.00 make sure they're going to be able to pay their bills
00:11:17.29 and take care of their family in the years to come.
00:11:19.21 It's really critical to understand
00:11:21.20 each of the stakeholders, think about what they value
00:11:23.21 and think about how to communicate with them,
00:11:26.22 when to communicate with them,
00:11:28.00 and what to communicate to them,
00:11:29.20 as part of an overall company strategy.
00:11:31.21 So, let me recap all the different
00:11:36.09 topics we've covered as part of the value
00:11:37.26 proposition. We've talked about why is the work
00:11:40.15 important. We've talked about what
00:11:42.04 is unique about the technology or
00:11:44.02 work product. And finally, who has a stake
00:11:46.14 in the outcomes of the work and what do they value.
00:11:49.10 Now some of you are interested in pursuing
00:11:51.22 careers in business, so I'd like to give you some advanced
00:11:53.29 topics, in case you'd like to do some more
00:11:55.16 research on your own after this course.
00:11:57.16 Much work is done in support of the development of
00:12:00.05 a value proposition, including competitive analysis,
00:12:03.03 market research, and stakeholder or customer mapping.
00:12:05.29 In addition, companies often use tools
00:12:08.07 such as the SWOT analysis
00:12:09.17 to consider their value proposition
00:12:11.23 and its strengths and weaknesses
00:12:13.29 both with respect to their competition, as well
00:12:16.10 as the market in which they're operating.
00:12:18.12 In addition, the value proposition itself
00:12:20.24 drives articulation of mission and vision,
00:12:23.24 product or brand positioning, and messaging.
00:12:26.01 All of which are really critical components
00:12:28.15 of that company's strategy.
00:12:30.09 Now I want to think, if you're moving into an
00:12:32.23 academic lab, there are a lot of parallels to
00:12:34.23 academia. So we're going to do a little thought
00:12:36.28 exercise, think about your academic lab
00:12:39.04 right now, and I'm going to pose you a few
00:12:40.20 questions. First, would you consider your lab
00:12:43.17 to be primarily need based or technology
00:12:45.09 based? Is it a why lab or a what lab?
00:12:47.29 Second, how do you think about the why's
00:12:51.04 and the what's of your lab's research program?
00:12:53.00 And third, who are the stakeholders that you think
00:12:56.05 about the most? And can you think
00:12:58.06 about ways in which you might address
00:13:00.13 different stakeholders in different ways in
00:13:02.13 different times?
00:13:03.10 This concludes part one of our course today.
00:13:07.15 Thank you very much for listening.

Part 2: Organizational Capabilities

00:00:12.21 Welcome to part two of Business Concepts
00:00:16.01 for Life Scientists, it's a strategy lecture.
00:00:19.02 My name is Sandy Ruggles and
00:00:20.27 I'm going to take you through the second half
00:00:23.08 of the presentation that we put together.
00:00:25.10 I am a former UCSF graduate student.
00:00:29.09 I have a PhD in biophysics.
00:00:31.14 And more recently, am a strategic marketer
00:00:34.14 in medical device and technology companies.
00:00:37.22 So in the first half of the presentation,
00:00:40.19 Deb Dauber took you through value proposition
00:00:44.01 and how value proposition can define
00:00:46.11 the strategy for an enterprise.
00:00:48.01 What I'm going to do now is take
00:00:50.07 you through the other element that defines
00:00:52.08 a strategy. And that's the organizational
00:00:54.25 context, and then from there
00:00:56.25 how both value proposition and
00:00:58.22 organizational context feed into an enterprise
00:01:01.28 as a strategy.
00:01:03.01 So what is the organizational context?
00:01:05.23 Organizational context defines, essentially, the
00:01:09.10 situation that an enterprise finds itself
00:01:11.06 in. So there are three main questions
00:01:14.11 that I would address here.
00:01:16.07 Where in the development cycle
00:01:18.02 is the enterprise?
00:01:18.25 What is the structure of the enterprise?
00:01:21.14 And what resources are available
00:01:23.20 to achieve the enterprise's objectives?
00:01:26.07 So let's start with developmental stage.
00:01:29.15 The developmental stage of the enterprise
00:01:32.13 is really going to shape the strategy.
00:01:33.21 In biotech and pharma, there's a very
00:01:36.29 specific cycle that products follow from concept
00:01:41.06 to clinic to market.
00:01:43.21 And that cycle is one that has very clear
00:01:48.27 milestones and progressions amongst it.
00:01:51.21 So an organization, or an enterprise,
00:01:54.06 may start one product, but they'll also have
00:01:57.11 a second product and a third product
00:02:00.07 that are in their portfolio that they use
00:02:02.20 to progress their objectives forward.
00:02:05.24 So the developmental stage of the enterprise
00:02:09.23 is going to really define the strategy.
00:02:13.26 When an enterprise is really early in
00:02:17.22 the pre-commercial lifecycle, say in the basic
00:02:20.08 research section, their focus is realy
00:02:22.16 going to be on validating that entity
00:02:27.14 for clinical development. A clinical stage
00:02:31.07 organization is focused on their clinical studies
00:02:34.28 and a commercial stage organization
00:02:37.19 is focused on generating as much revenue
00:02:41.14 as possible off of that entity that they took
00:02:44.16 through the product development.
00:02:46.04 Second, let's talk about organizational
00:02:50.22 structure. So an enterprise can structure
00:02:54.12 themselves in many, many different ways.
00:02:56.23 We're going to talk about four common
00:02:59.20 ways an enterprise is structured.
00:03:01.28 And this is from a very high level.
00:03:04.00 So in the bay area, you can find organizations
00:03:08.21 that are in any of these four buckets.
00:03:12.22 A fully integrated therapeutics company,
00:03:15.09 so one that starts with basic research and has
00:03:18.16 manufacturing, clinical, and sales
00:03:21.23 capabilities. Good examples of these are
00:03:26.02 Genentech, Gilead.
00:03:27.21 Contract research organizations
00:03:30.09 are enterprises that are focused on a specific
00:03:33.17 part of the development cycle
00:03:35.22 and have expertise in assays or
00:03:38.04 animal studies or clinical studies.
00:03:40.14 A virtual drug development structure is
00:03:43.14 one that is very lean on full-time employees
00:03:47.17 and instead progresses through the development cycle
00:03:51.02 by hiring contractors or other outside entities
00:03:54.28 to perform the development work.
00:03:57.12 And the last might be an organization
00:04:00.03 that's focused solely on preclinical validation.
00:04:04.19 So they partner all of their clinical development
00:04:08.24 and downstream sales with a larger
00:04:13.19 either pharmaceutical or biotech company.
00:04:16.00 Third, we're going to talk about the
00:04:18.22 resources available to the enterprise and how that
00:04:21.03 affects the strategy that an enterprise
00:04:24.19 can pursue. And I've broken this up into
00:04:27.09 two different areas, funding and organizational capabilities.
00:04:31.28 Both of these act as constraints
00:04:34.14 on the type of strategies that can be pursued.
00:04:36.23 So when we talk about funding, we're talking
00:04:40.03 about the budget available to fund
00:04:44.23 near term actions and any investment for growth.
00:04:48.02 So funding breaks up into three different areas.
00:04:51.24 The source of the funding, public or
00:04:54.21 private. The amount of the funding, whether that's
00:04:58.24 small amount of money or many hundreds
00:05:02.06 of millions of dollars. And the timing
00:05:03.24 of that money. So whether that's money that
00:05:07.28 is coming in 6 months or is money
00:05:11.02 and funding that can guarantee 3-5 years
00:05:14.04 worth of work.
00:05:15.22 Second, we're going to talk about organizational capability.
00:05:18.23 So this is the capacity of the enterprise
00:05:22.04 to actually reach their goals, given the resources
00:05:24.23 that they've built. So this affects
00:05:27.24 the speed and the type of work that can be
00:05:30.26 accomplished by the enterprise.
00:05:33.00 So I've broken this into three parts, as well.
00:05:35.02 We're talking about the people and their expertise.
00:05:37.22 Their ability and capacity to meet
00:05:40.13 certain goals and objectives.
00:05:42.20 We talk here about equipment and infrastructure,
00:05:46.06 so what does the enterprise have
00:05:49.08 in order to leverage to meet the goals and objectives?
00:05:55.19 And last is organizational structure.
00:05:57.13 So how many senior leaders versus
00:06:01.03 technicians does an organization have
00:06:03.21 and how have they been structured in order
00:06:07.11 to meet their goals?
00:06:08.19 So think of this as the framework within
00:06:11.02 which an organization is able to accomplish
00:06:14.09 their strategies.
00:06:15.19 So recap, organizational context is the situational
00:06:20.00 confines for the enterprise. And we've talked
00:06:23.02 about three different topic areas: development
00:06:25.04 cycle, enterprise structure, and the resources
00:06:29.22 available to the enterprise to meet their objectives.
00:06:32.18 So both of these, the value proposition
00:06:36.29 the value that the enterprise is bringing to the market,
00:06:41.13 the unmet need that they are pursuing.
00:06:44.16 And the organizational context, so the
00:06:47.16 restrictions and the box within which
00:06:49.21 an organization can work within,
00:06:51.15 are feeding into the strategy.
00:06:54.05 So the strategy is really the milestones
00:06:58.19 and the map of how an enterprise is going
00:07:02.23 to reach its long-term goals.
00:07:06.08 So, we can break up the strategy
00:07:09.17 into three different sections.
00:07:11.12 Long-term strategy, so strategy that's
00:07:14.20 out further than five years is
00:07:17.00 very aspirational. This is where the enterprise
00:07:20.07 wants to go and what they want to be.
00:07:23.16 The mid-term strategy is focused on
00:07:27.17 3-5 years and it's very preparational and directional.
00:07:32.22 So an example of this might be
00:07:35.20 the expectation to add an entire manufacturing
00:07:41.12 group or to add an entire capability
00:07:44.07 to the organization and grow that
00:07:46.25 over time. The last is the short-term
00:07:49.18 strategy, and the short-term strategy is really focused
00:07:52.16 around the next 1-2 years.
00:07:55.07 It's extremely tactical, focused, and incremental.
00:07:58.22 So really, it feeds into goals and objectives
00:08:02.23 that every person, stakeholder, has with regards
00:08:08.08 to the enterprise over the coming year.
00:08:10.27 So if the short-term strategy is where
00:08:15.11 the enterprise is going, the goals and objectives
00:08:17.25 would be where every individual within the
00:08:20.19 organization is headed personally over
00:08:23.06 the next 1-2 years.
00:08:26.02 Let's talk about Catalyst Biosciences
00:08:28.00 in year 1 as an example.
00:08:30.00 So Catalyst was really founded on the idea
00:08:32.28 of taking proteases, redesigning them so that they
00:08:36.06 would target novel proteins involved in
00:08:39.02 disease. And in particular, so that these
00:08:41.24 proteases could be used to go after targets
00:08:45.09 that were not amenable to antibody therapeutics.
00:08:48.08 And so the organization was in year 1 was
00:08:54.14 nascent, was really early. So let's talk about
00:08:57.25 the development cycle. So Catalyst
00:09:00.06 was in preclinical discovery basic research
00:09:03.21 in that year 1, with the goal though of becoming
00:09:08.10 a fully integrated biotherapeutics company.
00:09:10.13 The funding was $10.2million in Series A
00:09:15.16 and the capability was small.
00:09:18.16 10 people, mostly focused on proteolytic
00:09:22.26 assay development, automation, cell based assays,
00:09:26.28 and animal studies.
00:09:28.04 So what does that turn into from a strategy?
00:09:31.10 Well, we talked about long-term. Long-term Catalyst
00:09:34.25 was focused on becoming a publicly traded
00:09:37.19 fully integrated biotherapeutics company.
00:09:40.19 Of both getting into the clinic and through the clinic
00:09:44.09 to commercial of proteolytic therapeutics.
00:09:47.22 Mid-term, well how do you reach that long-term
00:09:50.29 strategy? You have to get into the clinic.
00:09:52.23 So the mid-term strategy was to advance
00:09:55.09 proteolytic therapeutic candidates forward enough
00:09:59.23 that they were into clinical study. And being able
00:10:02.05 to show effects in human patients.
00:10:05.09 Short-term strategy, 1-2 years, what needed to
00:10:09.16 be done? Well, the technology was being pulled out
00:10:12.15 of a university, so it needed to be industrialized,
00:10:15.21 it needed to be automated, and it needed
00:10:18.11 to be shown in multiple proofs of concept
00:10:20.29 validating experiments. And so
00:10:24.07 the short-term strategy was to find
00:10:26.23 preclinical partners and to do
00:10:30.02 internal development to progress the technology
00:10:33.12 forward enough that candidates can be created
00:10:36.19 that would advance into clinical studies.
00:10:39.03 So, strategy has a circular nature.
00:10:44.18 Strategy is never static, so in large
00:10:48.08 organizations, this is often an annual
00:10:50.28 strategic planning process.
00:10:53.14 A focus on strategy in the first quarter of the year
00:10:58.21 leads to forecasting and portfolio
00:11:01.12 planning, feeding into budget decisions
00:11:05.03 for the coming year, usually that's in the Q3.
00:11:08.21 And then in Q4, a focus on goals and objectives
00:11:13.09 for everyone in the organization. So in the coming
00:11:16.05 year, they know exactly what they need to accomplish
00:11:18.24 to meet the organization's goals.
00:11:20.11 So you see this continue over and over
00:11:23.28 and over and over again. And annual focus at the
00:11:27.00 beginning of the year on long-term strategy,
00:11:28.19 where does the organization want to get in 5-7 years?
00:11:32.03 And how will they get there? Leading to
00:11:34.03 that short-term series of goals and objectives.
00:11:37.05 Now in a large corporation you may do
00:11:42.08 this every year, in a small organization
00:11:45.03 like a startup, there tends to be a more static
00:11:48.17 strategy -- long-term strategy -- that lasts for
00:11:52.10 a couple of years, with the goals and objectives
00:11:54.17 changing on a six month to one year cycle.
00:11:58.12 So we're going to use iPierian as an example
00:12:00.21 here to talk about a large strategic change
00:12:04.09 that happened and when and how that happened.
00:12:07.06 So iPierian was founded in 2007
00:12:10.18 based as a what company, on the technology
00:12:15.02 of induced pluripotent stem cells as a
00:12:18.19 platform with which to develop novel
00:12:21.09 therapeutics. After 4 years of work, they had patents,
00:12:25.02 they had made some progress, but the board of
00:12:28.01 directors came in and made the decision to
00:12:30.27 fire most of the senior leadership of the organization,
00:12:34.03 bring in a new CEO named Nancy Stagliano,
00:12:38.08 who changed the direction of the organization
00:12:40.28 and the value proposition and strategy of the
00:12:43.16 organization. So she took iPierian
00:12:48.00 and refocused it as a why company,
00:12:50.22 into neurodegenerative disease
00:12:53.06 as a focus area and a technology of
00:12:57.01 monoclonal antibodies as the therapeutic
00:12:59.12 platform that they were going to pursue.
00:13:01.27 So leveraging the expertise in pluripotent stem
00:13:05.21 cells as a way to move forward in a specific
00:13:10.09 clinical area. And because of that
00:13:14.18 we have to imagine that a number of preclinical
00:13:17.10 projects had to be stopped. They didn't
00:13:19.13 fit within the why. Those in some cases
00:13:23.11 were spun out into an organization called
00:13:25.25 True North, a focus on orphan drug indications and
00:13:29.29 Nancy worked as the CEO of both of those
00:13:32.16 corporations for a period of a couple of years.
00:13:35.24 In 2014, iPierian was acquired by Bristol Myers
00:13:40.26 Squibb for $175million in initial payment,
00:13:45.25 and $550million in long-term milestone payments.
00:13:50.23 And True North continues as a clinical stage
00:13:55.17 organization with Nancy Stagliano as the CEO.
00:13:59.23 So, let's talk about where this leads
00:14:05.14 and where you can look for and think about
00:14:09.11 additional information that you might want to pursue.
00:14:12.00 So analysis for developing strategy uses
00:14:16.06 inputs from a couple of different areas, competitive
00:14:20.00 landscape, market opportunity assessment,
00:14:22.27 market segmentation, metrics. How is a project
00:14:28.21 progressing or how is a commercial
00:14:30.19 product selling? And portfolio. So analysis
00:14:36.04 of all of these areas will feed into
00:14:38.17 a strategy that uses the following skills.
00:14:41.19 So budgeting, forecasting, enterprise growth
00:14:46.04 planning, commercial planning, and program
00:14:48.14 management are all skills that are needed
00:14:51.20 in order to develop a robust organizational strategy.
00:14:54.29 So let's talk about a parallel to academia.
00:14:59.14 Here are some questions to consider
00:15:01.12 as you think about strategy in the context
00:15:04.02 of an academic focus area.
00:15:07.21 So first, what is the development cycle of
00:15:09.22 projects in your lab? Where are they between
00:15:13.09 basic research and publication?
00:15:15.04 How many projects do you have in each part
00:15:18.11 of the development cycle?
00:15:20.23 What are the organizational capabilities
00:15:22.19 of the lab? How many grad students,
00:15:24.23 postdocs, lab managers, are in that lab?
00:15:29.26 What kinds of equipment do you have, in order
00:15:34.00 to do the experiments that you're looking
00:15:37.07 to do? And then, what are the near and
00:15:40.08 long-term strategies for your lab?
00:15:42.06 So, what do you plan to accomplish
00:15:45.28 in the next year versus plan to accomplish
00:15:48.00 in the next 5 years and what
00:15:50.16 needs to be done in order to meet those milestones?
00:15:52.29 So wrapping up, here's some resources
00:15:58.01 to learn about business strategy.
00:15:59.28 You can look for university course work
00:16:02.28 primarily through a business school that
00:16:05.11 may provide information on -- theoretical information --
00:16:08.26 on business strategy. There are courses
00:16:11.03 on iTunes and Coursera that you can
00:16:14.10 look into. The Harvard Business Review
00:16:17.03 has excellent case studies that you can use
00:16:19.17 to understand business strategy. And
00:16:22.14 FierceBiotech or the Fierce umbrella
00:16:26.16 of daily newsletters can give you
00:16:28.27 focus and understanding of what it is
00:16:31.16 going on a day to day and week to week
00:16:34.28 basis with enterprises within a specific field.
00:16:39.22 And last, if you have a certain company
00:16:42.11 that you're really interested in, earnings calls and
00:16:45.07 publications from those public companies can give you
00:16:50.17 a huge insight into their business strategy.
00:16:52.23 So we've reached the end of the presentation,
00:16:55.03 thank you for watching and I hope
00:16:57.06 this was informational and educational.

Part 3: Parallels to Academia

00:00:12.22 Hi, my name is Anatol Kreitzer
00:00:15.01 and today I'm going to be telling you
00:00:16.08 about how concepts from business
00:00:18.09 that you've learned about in this course
00:00:20.13 are actually applied to your academic lab.
00:00:22.07 So you've learned about the value proposition,
00:00:25.05 in other words, why is the work important?
00:00:27.18 And what is unique about the technology
00:00:30.03 or the product? But this also
00:00:31.25 applies to the academic lab.
00:00:33.05 For example, is your lab primarily
00:00:36.02 need-based, is it addressing a question?
00:00:38.12 Or is it technology-based, are you developing
00:00:40.27 new tools? So for my laboratory,
00:00:43.10 we care a lot about systems neuroscience
00:00:46.18 questions, such as how is movement
00:00:49.15 organized and planned, and how is that
00:00:51.11 disrupted in Parkinson's disease?
00:00:52.24 In other words, my laboratory
00:00:55.02 is primarily a need-based
00:00:56.16 laboratory, but we of course rely on
00:00:59.12 technology to address our questions.
00:01:01.22 So we rely on both the why's and the what's.
00:01:04.11 So for us, the what's of my research
00:01:07.17 program are essentially the techniques and tools
00:01:09.25 that we bring to bear on the questions.
00:01:11.14 Now the questions, of course, are
00:01:13.07 primary. But the techniques are absolutely
00:01:16.04 critical. So for example, we use
00:01:17.23 imaging technologies, we use electrical
00:01:20.20 accordings from the brain, we do sophisticated
00:01:23.04 behavioral measurements. And these are all the what's
00:01:25.22 of my research program. But we didn't develop
00:01:27.24 these tools myself.
00:01:29.13 Instead we used them to focus on
00:01:32.15 critical questions related to adaptive
00:01:36.00 motor control and its disruption
00:01:38.05 in movement disorders and diseases
00:01:40.14 such as Parkinson's Disease.
00:01:41.13 So, who are the stakeholders
00:01:43.25 that I think about and care about most?
00:01:45.21 Well, primary would be my peer scientists.
00:01:48.29 So, as you saw when you thought about
00:01:52.28 stakeholders in industry, there are also a set of stakeholders
00:01:56.16 for academia. And research peers is
00:02:00.09 solidly in the middle, and the reason
00:02:02.17 that research peers are so fundamental
00:02:04.14 is because they evaluate your work
00:02:07.07 for almost all of your other stakeholders.
00:02:09.12 So for example, when you want to publish
00:02:11.08 a paper in a journal, that paper is going to be
00:02:13.17 reviewed by your academic peers.
00:02:15.29 When you want to get funded
00:02:17.21 by the National Institutes of Health,
00:02:19.26 for example, your peers are going to be reviewing
00:02:22.17 your grants. Similarly, if you want to get promoted,
00:02:25.25 you want your department chair to recognize
00:02:28.14 your value, your department chair will
00:02:31.01 actually get evaluations from your peers.
00:02:33.27 Furthermore, if you want to get a good postdoctoral
00:02:36.17 fellow applicants, those are going to be coming
00:02:39.06 from the laboratories from your peers.
00:02:40.29 So for me, my number one academic stakeholder
00:02:43.24 is my academic research peers.
00:02:46.17 However, individual stakeholders,
00:02:49.23 such as my employees, are obviously
00:02:51.16 treated quite differently. And I think my
00:02:53.12 second most important stakeholder
00:02:54.26 are the people in my laboratory itself.
00:02:57.12 Because fundamentally, in order to run
00:02:59.25 a successful laboratory -- similarly to run
00:03:02.20 a successful business, one needs to have
00:03:05.09 quality employees, and of course that
00:03:07.28 is really the heart and soul of the laboratory.
00:03:09.28 So next, we're going to talk about how
00:03:14.17 the organizational context influences
00:03:17.17 academic lab. Now you learned about how
00:03:19.18 organizational context is important
00:03:21.19 in the developmental cycle of a business
00:03:24.21 and how it helps structure a particular
00:03:26.22 enterprise. But in a laboratory,
00:03:29.19 many of the same concepts apply.
00:03:31.19 So for example, whereas in industry
00:03:33.14 one might have a developmental cycle
00:03:35.27 for various projects or drugs, or what have you,
00:03:40.02 in the lab, one has academic projects
00:03:44.00 that ultimately will become publishable units.
00:03:46.17 And so, I have a number of people
00:03:50.04 in my lab, probably about ten people.
00:03:51.23 And each of those people is responsible
00:03:54.10 for driving a particular project forward.
00:03:56.12 Now I have projects really at all stages
00:04:00.02 in my laboratory, I have
00:04:02.02 projects in their very infancy,
00:04:04.00 where it's really brainstorming ideas
00:04:05.20 and coming up with interesting and exciting
00:04:08.17 hypotheses. Often these are driven by
00:04:11.21 people new to the lab. Now there are also projects
00:04:15.03 that are sort of midway, where we've really
00:04:17.10 explored questions and developed some fascinating
00:04:20.14 pilot data, we may have even written some grants.
00:04:23.01 But these projects have not come to fruition.
00:04:25.11 And lastly, we have projects that are
00:04:27.26 actually almost finished and we're in
00:04:30.22 the final stages of preparing manuscripts,
00:04:33.11 putting together figures, trying to get this work published.
00:04:36.10 So in my laboratory, there's always
00:04:39.29 various projects at different developmental stages
00:04:42.12 and that is absolutely critical for
00:04:45.00 continued productivity in the lab.
00:04:47.16 And this is quite similar to business
00:04:49.24 strategy, in which you want to have multiple
00:04:51.14 products in the pipeline at all times.
00:04:54.04 So I would say that I like to have
00:04:57.25 roughly a regular turnover of people in the lab,
00:05:02.02 so new students coming in every couple years,
00:05:04.01 and therefore, new projects being
00:05:06.03 developed every couple years.
00:05:08.10 And that really ensures a continuous productivity.
00:05:11.01 Now in terms of organizational
00:05:12.24 capability, I've actually chosen to have
00:05:16.00 my lab split about 50/50 between
00:05:18.17 graduate students and postdocs.
00:05:19.29 And we have two research support staff.
00:05:22.08 And so this was actually a very intentional
00:05:24.19 allocation of resources on my part.
00:05:26.19 Graduate students, I think, are really
00:05:28.23 the creative force in a laboratory.
00:05:31.20 They bring new ideas, they're willing to take risks,
00:05:34.22 and when they leave the lab, they don't take
00:05:37.00 those projects with them.
00:05:38.14 So they really help build your laboratory.
00:05:40.21 In contrast, postdoctoral fellows come to the lab,
00:05:43.19 they're already trained, they get projects up and running
00:05:47.07 quickly. Usually they're a little more risk averse,
00:05:50.16 so they tend to go after more solid projects,
00:05:54.09 and when they leave the lab they actually
00:05:56.24 take those projects with them.
00:05:58.03 And that actually reduces really
00:06:00.25 the sorts of topics you can work on
00:06:02.17 in your laboratory. On the other hand,
00:06:04.09 they tend to be a little more productive.
00:06:06.07 So, I think it's really important to have
00:06:07.20 a balance between these two
00:06:09.04 types of people in the lab.
00:06:11.12 Finally, the support staff is really an important
00:06:13.25 and strategic decision, how many resources
00:06:16.27 do you allocate towards supporting
00:06:19.24 the either the graduate students or the postdocs
00:06:23.01 in the lab? And because this really is a zero sum game,
00:06:26.06 you have to figure out for any individual laboratory,
00:06:29.11 how much resources should be devoted to
00:06:32.07 supporting people in the lab.
00:06:34.23 So, for me, in terms of strategy, I really am
00:06:37.29 thinking about both near and long term
00:06:39.21 strategies. In the near term, I'm
00:06:42.07 mainly a project manager,
00:06:44.13 I'm meeting with people regularly, trying to bring
00:06:46.26 projects to completion, to publication.
00:06:49.14 But at the same time, I have to be thinking
00:06:52.05 five to ten years out. So this is really the long
00:06:54.02 term vision of the laboratory, what
00:06:56.02 new areas are we going to go into?
00:06:57.18 What new techniques are coming online
00:07:00.02 that we can bring to bear to really address
00:07:01.23 really exciting questions?
00:07:04.02 So, this is really a more long term vision,
00:07:07.09 and I think you need to think about both of these
00:07:08.26 things in parallel. And this really
00:07:10.13 applies to both the business setting
00:07:12.01 as well as the academic setting.
00:07:13.19 Now finally, I think running an academic
00:07:17.27 laboratory really does involve a number
00:07:20.17 of tradeoff decisions regarding resource allocations.
00:07:22.22 I alluded to one of those earlier,
00:07:24.19 when I mentioned how much money should we
00:07:28.04 devote to support staff versus primary
00:07:30.10 researchers. But these sort of decisions come up
00:07:33.29 all the time, for example, do you want to devote more
00:07:37.11 resources to imaging, for example, do I
00:07:39.13 want to buy a new microscope? Or do I
00:07:41.09 want to devote more resources to electrophysiology,
00:07:43.18 in recording from the brain?
00:07:45.07 So this is just from my particular case,
00:07:47.06 these are really fundamental decisions
00:07:49.02 that impact the kind of data that you can acquire,
00:07:51.27 and ultimately, the kinds of questions
00:07:53.24 you can address. So really,
00:07:55.06 you need to take into account
00:07:56.23 your longterm strategic plan
00:07:59.02 when you develop these sort of tradeoff decisions.
00:08:02.21 So with that, thank you for listening
00:08:06.07 and I hope I've illuminated some of the
00:08:08.06 parallels between academia and industry strategy.
00:08:12.06 Thank you.

Videos in this Talk

Part 1: Value Proposition
Audience:
- Researcher
- Educators of Adv. Undergrad / Grad
Part 2: Organizational Capabilities
Audience:
- Researcher
- Educators of Adv. Undergrad / Grad
Part 3: Parallels to Academia
Audience:
- Researcher
- Educators of Adv. Undergrad / Grad

Speakers: Sandra Waugh Ruggles, Anatol Kreitzer, Deborah Dauber

Total Duration: 0:39:13

Recorded: December 2016

All Talks in Professional Development

Talk Overview

This video series is designed to teach bench researchers how scientists develop and execute strategy. Content includes an overview of how scientific enterprises use business strategy such as determining value proposition, identifying stakeholders, and defining vision. Concepts will be reinforced using practical examples from academic and industry settings.

These videos are part of the Business Concepts for Biomedical Scientists course.