To Save Itself, Big Pharma Adds Strategy Executives
Posted by Jacob Goldstein
April 14, 2008, 9:17 am
Big Pharma has been accused of being a bureaucratic behemoth that’s too slow to adapt to the scientific and market realities of the 21st century. Several big industry players are responding by … wait for it … adding a new layer of high-level executives, the WSJ reports. [previous post]
J&J, not often accused of running too lean, added an entire “Office of Strategy and Growth” in HQ last year. The big thinkers are headed by Nicholas Valeriani, a VP who used to run the company’s devices and diagnostics unit. The group’s supposed to look for new health-business opportunities, such as information technology. Valeriani wasn’t available to talk to the WSJ about his work, and the company hasn’t yet announced specific changes resulting from his labor.
Earlier this year, Bristol-Myers Squibb named John Celentano to the new position of “senior vice president, strategy and productivity transformation.” If you think that title is a mouthful, consider that Celentano is in charge of the company’s “productivity transformation initiative,” a euphemism for the project that includes cutting thousands of jobs and closing half of the company’s manufacturing plants. But he’s also responsible for M&A, which he told the WSJ is likely to include licensing deals and modest acquisitions.
Around the same time Celentano landed his new job, William Ringo stepped into a similar sounding new position at Pfizer: “senior vice president of strategy and business development.” Ringo, who ran the biotech shop Abgenix before Amgen bought the company, will be “guiding Pfizer’s overall strategic planning and business development activities,” the company said.
And in January, Merck hired Caroline Dorsa for the new job of “senior vice president of global human health strategy and integration.” A company spokeswoman said the new position was needed to oversee strategy initiatives at Merck’s relatively new global human-health unit.
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