We help you get
closer to your customers.

Glaxo gets closer to their customer

GlaxoSmithKline, the large British pharmaceutical company, announced that it was taking what the Wall Street Journal called “the unusual step” of talking with its customers about its drug pipeline. GSK’s head of R&D invited European healthcare officials to review its development pipeline and give input into which drugs the pharmaceutical giant should prioritize.

What is remarkable to me is that talking with customers about new product development is still seen as “unusual.”

Traditional manufacturing operated according to a “make and sell” model in which R&D or engineering would come up with a new product, manufacturing would make it, and then sales and marketing were responsible for finding customers. Most successful product companies have evolved to a “sense and respond” approach in which the customer is at the center of product development and marketing strategy.

In a healthcare environment in which drug companies struggle to bring new products to market and insurance companies and governments are hesitant to pay for those that don’t work as promised (see Sunday New York Times), getting closer to your customers, putting them at the center of your product development and marketing strategy, is the only way to survive.