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Finally, in drug development, as in every area of business today, the phenomenon of a world growing smaller and moving faster has placed demands for change on business structures that cannot beand have not beenignored. The effects can be seen in the widespread reengineering and downsizing which, while not always easy or painless, are making today's companies much smaller and less unwieldy. |
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The development of increasingly sophisticated technology, the demand for faster and more flexible responses to global opportunities, the trend toward reengineering and downsizingall these factors have given rise to a new kind of business structure described by business writers William H. Davidow and Michael S. Malone, among many others, as the virtual corporation [1]. It is what Jan Hopland (whom Business Week credits with probably having coined the phrase) describes as an enterprise that uses collaborations with others to marshal more resources than it would ordinarily have on its own [2]. |
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In a virtual enterprise, the smaller, more flexible, and more efficient downsized entities join forces with each other to respond more quickly and effectively to new opportunities. Such an enterprise can (and some would say, must) exist because a world with fewer meaningful boundaries demands a business organization with fewer boundariesone in which the lines between internal and external interests are less defined and in which the ability to be fast and flexible is more valued than the ability to protect and defend the integrity of a rigid, impenetrable structure. |
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In the business of drug development, we see the idea of the virtual corporation reflected in the trend toward increasing contracting in of CROs, and forming unprecedentedly close relationships with them, to recognize and respond to drug development opportunities more effectively than would ordinarily be possible. |
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According to many business observers, learning to work within virtual relationships is going to be vital to remaining competitive in the future, not just for drug development companies, but for all kinds of business. Journalist Julie Cohen Mason, for one, contends that in today's global marketplace many companies are discovering that their long-term survival may depend on the partnerships they build with other companies [3]. Rosabeth Moss Kanter of the Harvard Business Review concurs. Alliances between companies, whether they are from different parts of the world or different ends of the supply chain, are a fact of life in business today, she says. being a good partner has become a key corporate asset. I call it a company's collaborative advantage [4]. |
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B. The Effects from Within |
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So far, we have examined the influence of trends in the business world in general on drug development. But there are also industry-specific circumstances driving |
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