Between Strategy and Change: Reformulating the Medicines Industry in an Enlarged Europe

Abstract

The question as how to achieve competitive advantage through a genuine and innovative set of strategic principles and tools is ever present in the business repertoire of all industries. Yet few manage to reorder their way of doing things to achieve the perfect correlation between business goals and external customers' expectations. With modern economics rejecting the existence of a perfect equilibrium between supply and demand, the job of the business strategy planner is harder than never before. The key to successful strategy creation, as this paper shows, lies in an understanding of three strategic perspectives:

The purchaser of health care services — patient and government — as investor in health as an asset.

Of customer perceived value as a distortion of the product ‘eidos’, due to market imperfections and asymmetries of information.

Of the effective management of the dynamics between suppliers ‘and customers’ interests.