John Dixon was at the forefront of drug discovery for more than three decades, including more than 20 years as Head of Medicinal Chemistry at Fisons, four years as VP of Preclinical R&D at Astra Charnwood, and then as VP of Drug Discovery at AstraZeneca Charnwood for a further nine years.
When he retired from AstraZeneca in July 2008 he set up JD International Consulting. He admits that it took ‘courage and initiative’ to set up on his own, but found a new sense of freedom after being in the cocoon of AstraZeneca.
Nowadays the corporate world of Big Pharma seldom encourages entrepreneurship, or individuality, and often values conformity. ‘Conformity does not necessarily lead to high quality, originality and creativity in research,’ he says. In the final years before he set up on his own, Dixon spent a large proportion of his working life dealing with distractions that were not contributing to the main objective of scientific discovery.
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