Publishing books for and about the pharmaceutical industry requires an interesting mix of skills; there’s an element of futurism – what will tomorrow look like; framing – offering a variety of different ways of looking at an uncertain and complex environment; finally, and perhaps most obviously, communication – finding a way of sharing practical ideas and techniques that makes greatest sense and is most appealing to readers within the industry.
There is one other added factor: the focus. We have chosen to publish books that look at the pharmaceutical industry from the perspective of commercial management; ‘the business of pharmaceuticals’. In so doing, we are careful to avoid publishing books on the clinical or overly technical subjects.
How does this translate in practice?
Futurism
Looking at the future of the industry involves investigating the commercial, social and political climate in which it operates. To that end, books such as The Price of Global Health (Schoonveld 2011), The Future of Health Economics (Staginus and Ethgen 2014) offer insights into the levers and mechanics of the finance that underpins the development of new drugs, the production and distribution of drugs and access to healthcare.
The overarching message from both these books reinforces what is already well covered in the pharmaceutical press, the confluence of: technology developments; growing needs and aspirations populations in the majority world; costs associated with chronic disease and ageing populations in many developed countries; all things that are fragmenting the markets for pharmaceuticals. For the pharmaceutical businesses themselves, the simple solution of ‘just get bigger’ no longer offers a way forward. The fragmentation of the market means they need to choose which market opportunities to pursue. The role of technology, lifestyle and other factors in healthcare requires they look at new forms of partnership with providers and payers from across the market.
To ensure the relevance and application of our books, future-gazing can only be a part of what they offer. There needs also to be a clear connection between the future models and management activity, thus for example: 'Even the best thought out strategies, based on deep customer understanding and experience in the field require customer validation through Payer and Pricing Research. Chapter 15 provides a fundamental review of drug pricing analyses and research techniques.' (Schoonveld 2011)
Framing the change
Framing the changes requires an understanding of the regulatory, pricing and other global changes, disaggregated by geography and culture. But you also need a sensitive macro model to allow you to make sense of the whole.
The future of Pharma by Brian Smith offers a series of competitive landscapes
Brian Smith’s The Future of Pharma (2011) and Darwin’s Medicine (2014) offer a series of competitive landscapes showing how pharmaceutical companies can and are adapting their business to the changing markets. As such these books are very effective as a kind of ‘intellectual GPS’, enabling readers to see the landscape around them; where they are within that landscape and where they are going.
'The first implication of the new industry habitat predicted by our research was striking: the industry’s three major business models – generics, Big Pharma and speciality pharma – have no place in the new world. They will become extinct or, at best, contribute some of their genes to new business models that will survive. There may still be business models known by those names, but only in the same way as we and our primitive ancestors are all called hominids, despite our differences. Firms clinging to their old business models are volunteers for extinction. However, in evolution extinction is usually accompanied by the rise of new species and, indeed, we predict the rise of a number of new pharma business models as firms adapt and specialise to fit the 11 new ecological niches predicted by our research. Each of these new business models will be distinct from the others, much as research-based and generic companies differ today. They will have different strategies, structures and capabilities and, to continue the species analogy, they will not compete directly with each other.' (Brian Smith, 2011)
But framing also involves exploring the process by which pharmaceutical companies can transform, which is the subject of John Ansell’s Transforming Big Pharma (2013). Whereas Smith, in his writing, tends to focus on the market for pharmaceuticals, Ansell’s focus is on where the new products will come from, as well as on encouraging the industry to adjust its assumptions to today’s reality.
'Slavish adoption of the textbook product life-cycle curve can result in premature withdrawal of promotional support from products capable in time of achieving greater success. Had misleading life-cycle theory been followed and promotion withdrawn from some of the products described above, they would never have gone on to reach greater heights.
Generally, the pharmaceutical industry has come to realize over the past 20 years that life cycles for pharmaceuticals are much actually longer than was formerly believed (see pp. 20–21, 243–6). Product sales often continue to increase right up to the time when all intellectual property rights have been exhausted.' (John Ansell, 2013)
Practical ideas and techniques
Perhaps understandably, give the economic turmoil of recent years, books such as Schoonveld’s, Smith’s and Ansell’s have had a higher profile than the more traditional end of our publishing; practical management books for the pharmaceutical industry.
However there remains a need for practical books too; titles such as Forecasting for the Pharmaceutical Industry (Art Cook, 2006, new edition in preparation), which enables readers to quantify the opportunities and risks associated with the changing markets. Or Knowledge Management in the Pharmaceutical Industry (Elizabeth Goodman and John Riddell 2014) and Applying Lean Six Sigma in the Pharmaceutical Industry (Bikash Chatterjee 2014).
These are books that enable managers to tackle the operational realities of transforming companies and business models.
A human scale
Jonathan Norman, Publisher, Gower Publishing, hopes this picture of Gower’s pharmaceutical book publishing gives readers a sense of the ideas that are informing the company's new title development. He welcomes ideas and proposals from practitioners, teachers or researchers for this part of its publishing.
He says: 'The pharmaceutical industry is an intellectually very stimulating subject on which to publish; somehow the challenges for change that every industry faces seem far more immediate, and overwhelming in the context of global pharma.
'Uniquely, this is an industry on which I have a professional and a personal perspective. As a citizen and consumer of health services and products, I can appreciate the changes facing the industry on a human scale; which adds something important, albeit, intangible to my publishing approach.'
www.gowerpublishing.com/industry