Course Detail (Course Description By Faculty)

The course is for students who plan to work with or in the Bio-Pharma industry - as a manager, entrepreneur, investor, or consultant.  It builds on concepts from introductory marketing and strategy courses and applies them to the unique challenges of pharmaceutical product commercialization and lifecycle management.  We will discuss how commercialization decisions are influenced by factors like science, regulation, market dynamics, patient care and business strategy.   The focus of the class is on how to optimize revenue and profit and scale up effectively in this industry.

Topics will be discussed using a combination of lectures, readings, cases covering the following areas. We will bring in a number of senior industry practitioners as guest speakers to share their knowledge with the class:

• Regulatory Landscape: An overview of the highly regulated nature of the life sciences industry. We will explore how these regulations affect strategy and decisions in product development and commercialization.
• Product Development & Lifecycle models: Understanding of the product development model in life sciences, including the risks, costs, timelines and the “attrition rate problem”. We will explore commercialization frameworks to evaluate product potential.
• Stakeholder Ecosystem: Manufacturers in the life sciences industry must navigate an extremely complex web of stakeholders and changing incentives throughout the product lifecycle. Understanding the roles, incentives, and decision-making power of these stakeholders is essential to managing risk, enabling market access, and unlocking opportunities to create value in market entry and expansion.
• How to identify commercially viable products and successfully commercialize them: How traditional concepts like segmentation, targeting, positioning, pricing, and go-to-market strategy apply in the life sciences context. We will explore how companies create and sustain competitive advantage in markets where customers include patients providers, payers, advocacy groups and regulators.

A detailed week by week syllabus is available below.  As we go along additional readings may be provided and we may modify the class to optimize learning objectives.

Please see detailed syllabus attachment

Being a good manager requires superior skills in analysis, decision making and both verbal and written communication.  The grade you receive will reflect your proficiency in the course material as well as your ability to communicate it.  The grade will be a combination of your performance in

• Class attendance and discussion (35%):
  1. Attendance:Your participation is integral to class discussions, so class attendance is expected.Since grades are dependent on class participation, absences, as well as arriving late or departing early, will adversely affect your grade.
  2. Quality contributions in class: Students will be offered opportunities to participate in discussions in each class. Your contributions should be clear, concise, and offer ideas that will advance our topic of discussion. It requires that you are prepared for class, having read and thought about the material and the case in advance. It is the quality of your contributions, not their quantity, that will determine your class participation grade. Peer evaluations may be used to supplement instructor evaluations.
• Homework Assignments (45%):Students will be required to submit assignments based on readings prior to the class.
• Final Assignment (see detailed syllabus): 20%