Eli Lilly Recreating Drug Discovery for the 21st Century Case Solution

1. Peter Drucker says that in order to be sustainable, the organization needs to consider customer’s tomorrow. Who are Lily’s customer’s tomorrow?

As lily’s strategy has been shifted from the broad spectrum to the niche market, when several pharmaceutical organizations started to face the expiration of the patent, so, they came up with a new strategy prior to their competitors in order to gain a competitive advantage from the market by providing them with the personalized treatments and for that lily have to shift from broad spectrum to the niche market. Moreover, lily’s idea for the niche market is to introduce the concept of personalized medicines, whereas, personalized medicines refers to the customization of the product as per consumer needs or requirements on the basis of their gender, age, genotype, price, biomarkers etc. and for such a big shift, it is also required to bring changes in their entire value chain according to their new product. However, in the pharmaceutical industry, it is important to first introduce the product to the payers, providers, diagnostic firms, clinical labs etc., because they all plays a key role in checking the reliability of the drug and the response of the people towards the new product. Responsiveness towards the drug also varies from patient to patient, so they will also make people and consumers aware of the new product by providing them with adequate knowledge. So, Lily’s tomorrow customers would include each and every person that comes in the process of the value chain i.e.; patients, payers, providers, and diagnostic centers and they all will further help out in targeting lily’s main customers who will use these personalized treatments as lily’s strategy is to focus on niche markets because they want to be more profitable while targeting fewer consumers. Moreover, they are also concerned about entering in those areas where their competitors are way fewer because it would always be beneficial in creating and gaining a competitive edge while providing the new product in a niche market.

2. Does Lily’s mission need to be adjusted to reflect the demands of the market?

Yes, it’s obvious that lily’s mission strategies need to be molded according to the demands of the market because they have been in the phase of introducing the concept of tailor made medicine which is also known as drug discovery that as a whole is an entirely new thing for lily’s and market. However, it would be best just to focus on a targeted group of the entire population in order to test the reliability of the tailor made medicines, and for that “niche high value” strategy can play a vital role in reflecting the market demands as it intends to focus on the smaller targeted group of the people on the basis of demographics, phenotype, price, quality of production and need of the market.