Publications

November 2024
Supplement

AlphaGo (C): Birth of a New Intelligence

By: Shikhar Ghosh and Shweta Bagai

This case, the final of a three-part series, explores DeepMind's pivotal transition from mastering games to solving real-world scientific challenges. In December 2020, DeepMind's AI system AlphaFold 2 achieved a breakthrough by solving protein folding—a 50-year-old... View Details

Keywords: Autonomy; Deep Learning; Drug Discovery; Healthcare Innovation; Neural Networks; Scientific Research; Technology Startup; AI and Machine Learning; Technological Innovation; Research and Development; Business Model; Business Strategy; Open Source Distribution; Technology Industry; United States

01 Mar 2007
News

Daniel Vasella

Vasella Illustration by Dennis Balogh Twenty years ago a young doctor with a hankering for business experience gave up his clinical practice in Bern, Switzerland, and moved to East Hanover, New Jersey, to try his hand at drug sales with... View Details

Keywords: Roger Thompson; multinational pharmaceutical company; prescription drugs; vaccines; Medicare; generics business; Health, Social Assistance

February 2019 (Revised September 2019)
Case

Theranos: The Unicorn That Wasn't

By: Joseph B. Fuller and John Masko

In 2003, 19-year-old Elizabeth Holmes founded a startup dedicated to making blood testing easier and more affordable. By 2015, her company, Theranos, was worth $9 billion. It boasted a star-studded board and contracts with national pharmacy and supermarket chains... View Details

Keywords: Theranos; Blood; Lab Testing; Fraud; Holmes; Balwani; Shultz; Carreyrou; Securities And Exchange Commission; Food And Drug Administration; FDA; SEC; Health Testing and Trials; Corporate Accountability; Organizational Culture; Misleading and Fraudulent Advertising; Crime and Corruption; Entrepreneurship; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry

March 2015 (Revised January 2024)
Case

CV Ingenuity (A): How to Evaluate the Commercial Viability of New Health Care Technologies

By: Regina E. Herzlinger and Andrew Otazo

Duke Rohlen (HBS MBA ’01) hoped to win over a prominent venture capital investor for Series B financing of his firm CVI that was creating a drug-eluting balloon (DES) to treat peripheral arterial disease. As a second-mover, Duke felt he was more likely to acquire... View Details

November 2013
Case

GlaxoSmithKline in China (A)

By: John A. Quelch and Margaret L. Rodriguez

Four GlaxoSmithKline employees were accused of bribing Chinese health care workers to prescribe the company's drugs. The accusations brought to light the questionable incentive structures of the Chinese health care system and the pressure on companies to adhere to... View Details

November 2013 (Revised September 2015)
Supplement

GlaxoSmithKline in China (B)

By: John A. Quelch and Margaret L. Rodriguez

In 2013, Chinese investigators detained four GSK employees for allegedly bribing health care staff to sell GSK pharmaceuticals. A month later, GSK's Asia Pacific regional president, Abbas Hussain, said the company would help identify corrupt practices. Two days later,... View Details

Article

Trends and Predictors of Biomedical Research Quality, 1990–2015: A Meta-Research Study

By: Maryaline Catillon

Keywords: Biomedical Research; R＆D; Innovation; Technology; Drug Trials; RCT; Health; Healthcare; Health Care And Treatment; Health Care Policy; Innovation and Invention; Innovation Strategy; Research and Development; Technological Innovation; Health Industry; Pharmaceutical Industry

Read Now

November 2016
Case

Anthony Starks at InSiL Therapeutics (A)

By: Gary Pisano and Vicki Sato

When Bruce Wayne hired Anthony Starks, he thought he had hit a home run by getting the most brilliant and passionate scientist-leader in the field to be his CSO. But a few months in, Wayne and Starks begin to clash over crucial forward-looking decisions about the... View Details

Keywords: Biotech; Silicon; Managing Innovation; Management Challenges; Managing People; Managing Organization; R＆D; R＆D Project Management; Platform; Venture Capital; Drug Discovery; management; Biotechnology Industry; California

04 Apr 2016
HBS Seminar

Ariel Stern, Harvard Business School

October 2002
Case

A Father's Love: Novazyme Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

By: Richard M.J. Bohmer and Bradley Campbell

John Crowley, CEO of Novazyme Pharmaceuticals, a start-up biotechnology firm developing an orphan drug to treat a rare lysosomal storage disorder from which his children suffer, must choose between a partnership and a buyout to have sufficient funds and support to get... View Details

Keywords: Technological Innovation; Business Startups; Partners and Partnerships; Financing and Loans; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Sales; Price; Product Development; Motivation and Incentives; Decision Choices and Conditions; Biotechnology Industry; Pharmaceutical Industry

July 2001 (Revised August 2005)
Case

Medicines Company, The

By: John T. Gourville

It is early 2001 and the Medicines Co. just received FDA approval to market Angiomax, a blood thinner to be used during angioplasties and heart procedures. It is intended to be a better alternative to Heparin, an 80-year-old drug that costs less then $10 per dose. The... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Change Management; Decision Choices and Conditions; Cost Management; Price; Product Marketing; Product Launch; Product Development; Risk and Uncertainty; Health Industry; Pharmaceutical Industry

September 1993
Supplement

Manufacturing at ALZA: The Right Prescription? (B)

By: Dorothy A. Leonard

ALZA, a drug delivery company, must decide what and for whom to manufacture. In the past, it has licensed to pharmaceutical companies its patented system for the slow release of drugs into the human system. Therefore the company has little experience in choice of drug... View Details

Keywords: Experience and Expertise; Decision Choices and Conditions; Patents; Production; Pharmaceutical Industry; Medical Devices and Supplies Industry

Find at Harvard

September 1991 (Revised February 1993)
Case

Burroughs Wellcome and AZT (A)

By: Willis M. Emmons III

Burroughs Wellcome Co., developer of AZT, the first drug approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), finds itself under siege in September 1989 by AIDS activists and various segments of the U.S.... View Details

Keywords: Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Ethics; Business and Government Relations; Communication Strategy; Health Care and Treatment; Monopoly; Intellectual Property; Research and Development; Price; Pharmaceutical Industry; London

Profile

Avi Kremer

millions of dollars into research, and removed critical barriers to the development of treatments. “Our focus was to get drug companies to invest money in ALS,” says Kremer, who was diagnosed in 2004, just weeks into his first year at... View Details

Keywords: Health Care; Entrepreneurship

September 2014 (Revised February 2015)
Case

Pfizer and AstraZeneca: Marketing an Acquisition (A)

By: John A. Quelch and James Weber

In 2014, Pfizer proposed a friendly acquisition of AstraZeneca, but the AstraZeneca board resisted over price and strategy concerns. Was this good for pharmaceutical consumers? Pfizer, like pharmaceutical companies in general, faced difficulties in growing sales due to... View Details

Keywords: Health Care Policy; Mergers And Acquisitions; Marketing; Government Relations; Crisis Management; Decision Making; Growth and Development; Management; Markets; Strategy; Pharmaceutical Industry; United Kingdom; United States

29 Mar 2024
Video

Sanso: Satchu-Burgstone Runner-Up Prize Winner, Student Business Track, 2024 New Venture Competition

Research Summary

Marketing and Competition in Pharmaceutical Markets

In his research on pharmaceutical markets, Professor King explores how marketing and product differentiation affect competition among firms in the prescription market for anti-ulcer drugs. Four main results emerge from an analysis of antiulcer drug sales from 1977 to... View Details

10 Aug 2015
Research & Ideas

New Medical Devices Get To Patients Too Slowly

While the US Food and Drug Administration has chiseled away pharmaceutical review times over the years to speed innovative drugs to market, the opposite seems to have occurred in the agency's approval of... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Health; Technology

November 2006 (Revised November 2007)
Case

Strategy in the Twenty First Century Pharmaceutical Industry: Merck & Co. and Pfizer Inc.

By: David J. Collis and Troy Smith

The global pharmaceutical industry has gone through substantial changes in the last few decades and pharmaceutical firms face major challenges including headline-grabbing litigation, imminent patent expirations, new technologies, rising drug development costs, generic... View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Growth and Development Strategy; Product Development; Research and Development; Corporate Strategy; Pharmaceutical Industry; United States