SEPTEMBER 2015 / NO. 1
TAGS: MANAGEMENT, CHOICES, WHY?, PHARMACEUTICAL, KEYNOTE, JORIS LUYENDIJK, It CAN’T BE TRUE, CITY OF LONDON

Management and strategic choices

“Management can never be completely comfortable with its strategic choices because the company is then at risk of missing the dynamics of change in their business environment”
The statement above is about strategy, the most difficult topic in business today. Strategy is not about vision-mission-objectives-strategies.
Neither is it the descriptive front-end of the yearly budget as we see too often. It is also not about costs, which are under the control of management. Strategy is about making choices differently from the competition and about revenues, whereby it is the customer who is in charge and not the management! Strategic intelligence is the precondition to becoming successful in creating unique strategies. Why? Because this is not about prediction or unrealistic and wishful forecasting, but because strategic intelligence delivers the ultimate insights and foresight for strategy.
On 24-25 February, 2015, the international pharmaceutical industry gathered in Amsterdam on the topic of competitive intelligence. The sector shared their expertise and experiences amongst 175 delegates from international companies such as Abbott, AstraZeneca, Bayer, Biogen, Boehringer Ingelheim, Celgene, Chiesi, Daiichi Sankyo, Debiopharm, Fresenius, Helsinn, Janssen Pharma, Merck, MSD, Novartis, Novo Nordisk, Roche, Sanofi, Sanofi-Aventis, Shire Pharmaceuticals, Takeda, Teva, Zambon and others. It was an honor for our firm to give the keynote opening speech at this European conference. Why was it so interesting to attend this conference? Simply, because pharma is well ahead of the game in competitive intelligence. It was also amazing to note that only two out of the 175 participants were from the Netherlands and Belgium.

“It Can’t Be True”

This is the title of the book by Joris Luyendijk, who did in-depth research for 2 years in the City of London. His conclusion: nothing has changed since 2008. The complete structure of the status-driven financial sector in the City is focused only on earning as much money as possible. Everyone is fighting everyone to get as much out of the ‘bonus pool’ as they can. In February 2015, € 123 billion in bonuses were paid in the City alone! The situation in 2015 is exactly the same as in 2008. In the next section we will examine this in more detail.
“Consensus is good, unless it is achieved too easily, in which case it becomes suspect”
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