Articles – Pharmademics Consulting Solutions

Creativity, Innovation & Ipr

admin — Tue, 08 Jan 2019 04:10:35 +0000

Creativity is the characteristic of a person to generate new ideas,alternatives, solutions and possibilities in a unique and different way. it is theability to conceive something unpredictable, original and unique. it must be expressive, exciting and imaginative. it is the mirror of how beautifully a person can think in any given circumstance.

Innovation is an act of application of new ideas to which creates some value for the business organisation, government, and society as well.Better and smarter way of doing anything is innovation.Innovation is closely tied to creativity i.e. putting creative ideas into action is an innovation.

Innovation = Creativity+ Commercialization

IP is any product/Process of the intellect protectable by law.Intellectual Property is:

A legal concept: Copyright, trademarks and geographic indications, patents, trade secrets, plant variety protection

Asocial construct that defines “intangible” borders (as opposed to tangible, real property borders)

A business asset that can be valued and traded

An instrument to achieve humanitarian objectives

A policy tool to foster investments in innovation

WhereDoesInnovationscomefrom?

Innovation is a novel match between a need and a solution that creates value. Innovation = Need + Solution (New Match) for Creation of value.

IP adds value at every stage of the value chain from creative/innovative idea to putting a new, better, and cheaper, product/service on the market

BE CREATIVE

IDENTIFY PROBLEMS AND NEW NEEDS,

PROPOSE SOLUTION AND NEW ALTERNATIVES

CREATE VALUE WITH NEW SOLUTIONS

DO INNOVATIONS

PROCURE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

ENJOY THE FRUITS OF CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION

Design Thinking The Future Of Innovation

admin — Mon, 07 Jan 2019 14:59:26 +0000

“Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success. Design can help to improve our lives in the present. Design thinking can help us chart a path into the future” —Tim Brown, IDEO.

Design thinking is a method for developing innovative solutions for complex problems, by deliberately incorporating the concerns, interests, and values of humans into the design process (Brown, 2009; Meinel and Leifer, 2011). Design thinking is deliberately iterative and aims to rapidly develop and test multiple possible solutions to arrive at an optimal one (Brown, 2008; Denning, 2013). The concept originated with the company IDEO, which was founded in 1991 by David Kelley and partner design firms. Kelley further popularised design thinking in academia and design practice by founding the Stanford Design Centre in 2006, and the concept has also gained considerable public attention through successful government projects (Denning, 2013). Design thinking has five core characteristics:

1) a human-centred approach,

2) a strong integration of experimenting with artefacts,

3) collaboration in multidisciplinary teams,

4) an integrative and holistic view on complex problems, and

5) a characteristic five-step process consists of ‘Empathize, ‘define’, ‘ideate’, ‘prototype’, and ‘test’

Design Thinking revolves around a deep interest in developing an understanding of the people for whom we’re designing the products or services. It helps us observe and develop empathy with the target user. Design Thinking helps us in the process of questioning: questioning the problem, questioning the assumptions, and questioning the implications. Design Thinking is extremely useful in tackling problems that are ill-defined or unknown, by re-framing the problem in human-centric ways, creating many ideas in brainstorming sessions, and adopting a hands-on approach in prototyping and testing. Design Thinking also involves ongoing experimentation: sketching, prototyping, testing, and trying out concepts and ideas.

Design thinking is a deeply human process that taps into abilities we all have but get overlooked by more conventional problem-solving practices. It relies on our ability to be intuitive, to recognize patterns, to construct ideas that are emotionally meaningful as well as functional, and to express ourselves through means beyond words or symbols. Nobody wants to run an organization on feeling, intuition, and inspiration, but an over-reliance on the rational and the analytical can be just as risky. Design thinking provides an integrated third way.

The design thinking process is best thought of as a system of overlapping spaces rather than a sequence of orderly steps. There are three spaces to keep in mind: inspiration, ideation, and implementation. Inspiration is the problem or opportunity that motivates the search for solutions. Ideation is the process of generating, developing, and testing ideas. Implementation is the path that leads from the project stage into people’s lives.

Design thinking isn’t about how good you are at design tools such as Photoshop, but rather it’s about using human elements when figuring out how to create products that addresses the real needs of people.

Using the design thinking process, everyone is a designer and design is everywhere – the way you plan out your day, the way you arrange furniture in your room, the way you match clothes. In the corporate setting, it’s important to find out and integrate the end users’ needs from the beginning, so that you don’t end up spending all your time solving the wrong problem.

Innovation Ecosystem in India

admin — Mon, 07 Jan 2019 13:43:51 +0000

The Global Innovation Index (GII) 2018 has ranked India as the 57th most innovative nation among 126 countries based on 80 indicators, ranging from intellectual property filing rates to R&D, mobile application creation, online creativity, computer software spending, education spending, scientific & technical publications and ease of starting business. The country has improved its ranking from 60th position last year. India has been improving steadily since it was ranked 81st in 2015. Meanwhile, China improved its ranking from 22 in 2017 to 17 this year. As the second most populous country in the world and the fastest growing economy, there is plenty of opportunity for innovation in India. Indeed, it has been a political priority and therefore Indian Government has already been declared 2010-2020 as the “decade of innovation”. However, despite an environment conducive to innovation, much of it is focused in few industries such as the pharmaceutical and automotive industry. Innovation is also concentrated in a relatively low number of states; for example 70% of all incubators can be found in 6 out of the 29 states in the country.It is also true that Indian in-formal innovation sector does not get captured properly under the current GII evaluation indicators hence it is required to align this in-formal Innovation system with evolving new innovation indicators . In a recent Spotlight blog by Nesta following five priority areas are outlined for scoping the Indian Innovation ecosystem :

1.Coordinate efforts more

Innovation is a political priority for the government and is recognised by most government departments as necessary for economic and social growth. In practice, there is no single leader for coordinating or driving innovation in the country. Many efforts to set up incubators and funds do exist but duplication of efforts has been observed, and there is a need for better coordination. A key priority remains how innovation in R&D can be commercialised, hence the need to strengthen the links between public and private sectors.

In terms of coordination, several departments have implemented public-private innovation partnerships. BIRAC is one example, where biotech enterprises align their research efforts with national needs. There are also a number of flagship programmes launched by the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion such as Startup India and Make in India which aim to drive innovation in the country. There is a wealth of initiatives launched by ministries including hackathons, smart cities, skilling programmes, tinkering labs and so on; many of these are new and their impact is yet to be fully evaluated.

2. Get the young population innovating

More than half of India’s population is under the age of 34 and the number of people taking up research as a career is on the rise. To enable access to STEM education there are a number of loan schemes and scholarships available to enrol into both private and public institutions. India’s culture of research is reflected by the fact that it has the second largest number of STEM graduates globally.

Academic institutions are dominated by teaching universities which carry out little research, limiting the pipeline of qualified faculty who do research. This has various implications including a high pupil:teacher ratio in higher education and low numbers of full-time researchers when compared to countries like China and the UK. Upskilling the workforce with formal vocational skills is a key priority too, and this is challenging when a third of young people are not in education, employment or training.

3. Stimulate research in higher education

An area where India needs to stimulate research and development is in the higher education sector. Historically India has focused on scientific investment based in industries such as pharmaceuticals. Technology has received far less attention and as a result engineering skills are underrepresented. Generally, Indian universities do poorly in global rankings, and the Government of India recognises that these are not fulfilling their research potential.

In response, India is developing a new education policy. The framework for this includes a nationwide consultation and input from citizens online. The consultation themes include promotion of research and innovation; and how to better link education and industry in order to improve employability.

4. Make it easier to innovate everywhere

A key way in which India has increased its knowledge assets is through mergers and acquisitions of companies abroad, in a range of sectors including aerospace, automotive, and software. To boost innovation more of this knowledge needs to be produced internally. There isn’t enough integration between industry and academia, resulting in a relatively low publication output and little knowledge sharing taking place.

There is also a backlog of patents and the domestic patent application process has been historically cumbersome for entrepreneurs. As in many other countries, opportunities for innovation are skewed towards the city, with 80% of startups and incubators concentrated in three cities.

Reforms have made filling for intellectual property rights more simple through ‘patent facilitation centres’ and the introduction of subsidies and other incentives. India also set up the Global Innovation and Technology Alliance and Centres of Excellence which aim to maximise knowledge sharing in partnership with innovation leaders like Israel, Finland, Germany and Japan.

5.Continue to frugally innovate

Innovation in India is characterised by the emergence of low cost innovations suitable for a country where 70% of the population live in rural areas. Low-cost innovations in resource-constrained environments such as the Mitticool fridge (a fridge made of clay which requires no electricity) respond to necessity; frugal innovation is an area where India continues to lead in. Nesta has previously reported on how this is a unique specialism of the Indian system and gives it a unique competitive advantage.

This needs to be carried out in a coordinated fashion through programmes such as The Honey Bee Network, which is supported by the government of India; its aim is to uncover grassroots innovations and inventions and help to scale them up nationally and globally.

Multi Channel Marketing In Pharma

admin — Thu, 06 Sep 2018 11:39:58 +0000

“I think the biggest innovations of the 21st Century will be the intersection of …biology [health, medicine] and technology [digital]. A new era is beginning…” –Steve Jobs

A digital wave is sweeping across the $17 billion Indian pharmaceutical industry and companies are dumping old ways of marketing for newer technology, a survey of 20 top drug makers in the country has found. This new technology ranges from scientific detailing to doctors to using newer algorithms for better insights into issues like patient compliance. The trend matches a similar switch in China over the last few years.

Mobile apps and social media are set to play a bigger role in this growth, the study that is part of a larger report on global digital marketing trends found.This will help India catch up with tech-savvy emerging markets peers like China, where nearly half the companies are expected to allocate more than a fifth of their marketing budget to digital marketing.

The concept of multichannel marketing dates back more than 50 years and has been practised for as long as companies have long been able to use different channels to reach customers at various points in their decision cycles. However, for pharmaceutical companies one channel always reigned supreme: the field force. Meeting healthcare professionals (HCPs) face-to-face was the way to shift products.

Now, multiple forces are unpicking this long-standing model. The proliferation of digital technologies has redefined the parameters of multichannel marketing, giving companies many more ways to reach customers on their paths to purchases. More importantly, a fast-rising number of the pharmaceutical industry’s customers rely on online searches, websites and other digital platforms for information.

In traditional marketing to physician, a typical face-to-face communication channel with the representative use to be followed with the product sample and detailing aids to market the prescription drugs, which ultimately give away the market to the product. The majority of these marketing practices work on the premise of oneway conversations, with Pharma informing consumers of the benefits of its products, as well as the risks of a particular drug as required by law. In recent times, reduction in the active time allocation by the physicians towards to representatives selling has become significant. The advent of digitalization all around the globe have altered the shifted marketers strategy towards utilization these technologies in marketing a product in more significantly and conveniently. This concept has driven a way to multichannel marketing (MCM). Simply, multichannel marketing can be defined as the marketing strategies for the customers who are using more than one channel of interaction with an organization for marketing a product. Multichannel marketing in pharmaceutical industry approaches with various coordinated communication channels to reach consumers, patients, and physicians with marketing communications or product/marketing information at the appropriate point in their product selection decision cycles. In MCM the integrated use of internet based diversified multiple marketing channels, facilitated pharma companies to render better presentation of the products to end consumers in business to consumer model. MCM prevailed over limitations of a single channel i.e., follow customers where a sales representative cannot, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It promises to save marketing departments money by allowing them to use the most efficient method to contact each of their customers

To get your MCM strategy right, following are the key steps :

Planning– Primary objective for the MCM strategy which should be align with your business strategy.

Research & segmentation– It is important to spend some time & effort in understanding the HCP channel preference & segmenting them into 4 to 5 HCP buckets based on their behavior & preferences.

Channel Selection & Communication Strategy– The selection of channel should be based on the research & the profile of Doctors & proper communication strategy should match with you divisional or product strategy.

Budget Allocation– Budget on the MCM campaign should be based on the stage of the product life-cycle- The ideal would be as follows;
A- Launch Phase- 80 % traditional + 20 % MCM
B- Growth Phase- 60 % Traditional + 40 % MCM
C- Maturity Phase- 40% Traditional + 60 % MCM

Success Matrix & Adoption of future strategy – Companies often measure the success of MCM campaigns as how much sales has been generated which is not advisable specially when you are planning for a pilot & exploring the opportunity in this space.

The success of the campaign should be measures in the following aspects–

A- Level of Access

B- Quality of Interaction

C- Interaction on different Channels (Engagement)

D- Feedback