Scores of leading biopharma C-suite and senior executives congregated at IDEA Pharma’s The Future of Pharma panel discussion event to hear the company announce who it believes are the top 10 most innovative and exciting companies selected from the whole of the industry, as it launches its new index – The IDEA Index.
Already renowned for compiling the annual Productive Innovation Index (PII) that ranks those companies best at successfully bringing innovations to the market (scheduled for release in late February), the IDEA Index celebrates those companies who either can’t be included in the PII by revenue, who innovate in ways that aren’t about NCEs making it to market, or who just haven’t had the time to make that top 30 yet. The IDEA Index purely focusses on those biopharma companies that excite IDEA Pharma the most and who it believes are the companies it expects to be driving the industry in the next 5-10 years.
„The IDEA Index is gloriously analogue. If we have learned anything when we have looked into innovation in past performance, it is that talk is easy, but many companies haven’t even figured out which walk to do. Past performance may well not predict future performance, but when you spend enough time looking into what contributed to those past performances, the substance of innovation becomes more noticeable.” comments Mike Rea, IDEA Pharma’s CEO. “True innovation should be celebrated, but in the main it is poorly defined and there is a lack of understanding about what it is. Which is why we not only devised The Future of Pharma panel series, bringing the best minds in the industry together to combine insight and key learnings centred around this complex topic, but also designed the index, to highlight those companies that are demonstrating true innovation, creating a stir and making a real difference to our industry.”
The Future of Pharma discussion panel comprised: Otsuka America Pharmaceutical Inc.’s President and COO, Bob Oliver; Janssen’s Global Head of R&D, Dr William N. Hait and Teva’s President of Global R&D and Chief Scientific Officer, Dr Michael Hayden, who joined forces to discuss what innovation is and how collective thinking can positively shape the future of our industry, as well as promoting healthier values and ethical practices.
The IDEA Index 2016 – celebrating innovation. The most exciting innovators in the biopharma industry:
Alexion: for pioneering rare disease treatments, and for bringing meaningful differences to their patients
BioMarin: for laser-like focus on commercialisation, from nothing to 5 globally marketed products, with no partnering/ licensing and with 7 products in late-stage development
Celgene: for delivering actual, authentic patient-centricity
Gilead: for developing cures where others saw incremental improvements, for holding onto the idea of value for its treatments, and for wide-ranging clinical programmes to ‘own’ diseases
Incyte: for approaching the unmet need in cancer in its own, meaningful way
J&J: for consistently doing what most others are only talking about, redefining what a pharma company can be
Novo Nordisk: for single-minded pursuit of excellence in a disease area, for properly engaging with IBM’s Watson for more than PR, and for an ability to take an innovative wraparound approach to diabetes and obesity
Otsuka: for being the first to have an ingestible sensor in a pill accepted by the FDA for potential approval, and ushering in the era of possibility that enables
Regeneron: for a continued opportunistic harnessing of science in discovery and development, but also for showing established players the way to commercialise
Teva: for a truly patient-centred approach in novel therapeutic entities (NTEs), challenging the gap between unmet need and solution, putting known molecules into novel approaches