Mapping Global Talent: Essays and Insights - Heidrick & Struggles

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Life Sciences
A healthy
future?
Jeff W Dodson
Life Sciences practice
jdodson@heidrick.com
Heidrick & Struggles Mapping Global Talent: Essays and Insights
The life sciences sector, in many ways, is
a victim of its own success. The medical
and public health advances of the last
several decades have translated into
healthier people, longer lifespans, reduced
infant mortality and an expanding global
population. It seems demand for healthcare
services and products can only continue to
increase globally.
The prevalence of ‘lifestyle’ diseases – such as obesity
and alcoholism – are already causing increased alarm
in the developed world, leading to a greater focus on
disease prevention and education in those economies.
Meanwhile concern over infectious diseases, particularly
Avian Flu and HIV/AIDS, will facilitate greater
government cooperation with industry in both the
emerging markets and the developed world, increasing
the demand for multi-lingual healthcare policy experts
with a global perspective in both the public and
private sector.
The global pharmaceutical business will see continued
growth, but at a slower rate, as more low-cost generics
become available, government pricing pressures
continue, and truly innovative drugs come to market
at a slower pace. This steady growth will be sustained
by increasing knowledge about DNA and molecular
science, which promise more personalized drugs able
to target niche markets with greater efficacy. This
should deliver greater pricing power to the industry
but may require the sale of larger numbers of lower
revenue drugs rather than reliance upon the traditional
blockbuster model of selling a few key drugs to large
segments of the global population.
Whether due to costs, restructuring, mergers, a
reluctance to hire from outside the industry, the rapid
growth of emerging markets or a combination of all
five, the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries
have historically failed to invest sufficient resources in
building their internal teams. The biotech companies
have tended to rely on a pretty hand-to-mouth existence
while the more established firms in pharma have often
operated as exclusive US/European clubs, increasingly
leaning on staffing organizations to fill their talent
gaps in the short term, rather than applying long-term
succession planning. As the influence of China and
India continue to rise over the next five years this trend
cannot continue; already there is growing evidence of
the gradual move to outsourcing selected functions, an
option the industry had previously been slow to accept.
When assessing a move to outsourcing, biotech
companies will need to ensure they are able to access
similar talent pools and resources to those they have
in their current locations. Existing biotech clusters