Most pharma giants look an awful like IBM of the late 80′s and early 90′s. If you remember IBM of that era, that's not a pretty picture. Unfortunately, too many pharma are following the path of the railroad industry early in the 20th century missing out on a huge opportunity (i.e., mistaking which business they were in). True leadership will be apparent in the pharma leaders that channel Lou Gerstner and take action before its too late. In one of the great turnarounds in business history, IBM demonstrated how it’s possible for a large company to shift from a product-centric culture to a customer and service centered company. The handwriting is on the wall for pharma: They will succeed or fail based not on how many drugs they sell, but on how well their offerings improve health outcomes.

The marketing myopia of the railroad industry is well documented in the world of business yet most organizations makes the same mistake. Railroad businesses assumed they were in the “railroad” business, rather than the “transportation” business. Consequently, they missed out on countless opportunities to pursue growth in the auto industry. In contrast, IBM was able to use their near extinction that led them to bring in Lou Gerstner to reinvent IBM over a 10 year period. In some ways, Gerstner's predecessors acted more like Martin Shkreli than true business leaders -- they optimized for short-term profiteering over long-term success. IBM's turnaround put Lou Gerstner in the pantheon of turnaround CEOs: A 10x increase in IBM’s stock value. In contrast, most pharma companies aren’t spending enough time thinking like IBM. 

If pharma leaders don't immediately see where they fit into the post-Copernican view of healthcare depicted below, they need to conduct a strategic look into the details of the post-Copernican, population health centered industry taxonomy...