Unlocking the power of partnerships: 5 lessons I’ve learned so far

At Novartis, we’ve embarked on an ambitious digital transformation to harness the potential of 150+ years of deep scientific experience and more than 2 million patient years of clinical trial data. When it still takes 12 years and 2.5 billion USD to bring a drug to market, we’re committed to unlocking the next wave of innovation with data science and digital technology and imagine what if…?

• What if we could transform how we innovate in R&D to bring medicines to patients 2 years faster? From daring to approach complex human biology as a computational challenge to rethinking how we recruit clinical trials.
• What if we could upend traditional approaches to customer engagement and reach twice as many patients twice as fast? 
• What if, with an eye to reinvest in R&D, we look at our business operations and ask, could we revolutionize the way we work and reduce our costs by $1–2 billion?   

We cannot answer these big questions on our own, but as the lines blur and data, science and technology all converge, we don’t have to.

I'm proud of the progress we've made over the last two years to make Novartis digital and pursue some bold moves, which I firmly believe wouldn't have been possible without unlocking the power of partnerships.

I consider our partners a key extension of our teams. Not vendors or competitors but genuine partners whose complementary expertise can accelerate our transformation and help us reimagine medicine.

With our solid scientific backbone, we are keen to learn and collaborate with the health tech ecosystem at large, from nimble startups and innovative academic institutions to some of the biggest players in the industry and break new ground together.

I’m energized not just by how these collaborations help us realize our three big ‘What if’s?’ but everything we’re learning as we work alongside them in pursuit of these ambitions.

As I head to JPM and reflect on the 12+ collaborations we closed in 2019, I’m keen to share my 5 biggest learnings so far:

1. Working with big Pharma can be hard: Combine a highly regulated industry with a global, matrix organization of over 100,000 people and it is easy to understand how working in this space can be challenging for companies both big and small. In 2018, we launched the Novartis Biome to specifically address this challenge – to serve as an ‘on ramp’ to help business teams and the tech ecosystem work better together to create digital solutions at scale.
2. Add a boost of entrepreneurial spirit: As an entrepreneur who worked at ‘startup’ Amazon, I know their orientation around the customer is real, infectious and something we’re championing at Novartis, whether that customer is a patient, HCP or colleague. I’m passionate about the impact small, empowered teams can have when they adopt more of a startup mindset - curious, inspired and unbossed to learn, and find new ways of innovating at pace and scale. As I look to the year ahead, I’ll continue to challenge our teams to consider how a company with the muscle of Novartis can operate at scale with the agility and entrepreneurial spirit of a startup. 
3. Co-creation is key: Inviting external experts to co-create innovative solutions alongside our talented workforce creates exciting opportunities for our own bright minds to learn new skills. I want talent to believe they will learn and grow from our collaborations and from working with the incredible people who choose to be at Novartis. It’s in this spirit we recently launched the Novartis AI for Life Residency Program, a first for the healthcare industry. This 12-month program aims to give data science graduates and researchers an unprecedented opportunity to join the teams working on complex challenges across our research, global drug development and commercial teams and apply their cutting-edge data science and AI expertise to real-world healthcare challenges.
4. It’s important to say no: When embarking on a global transformation it can seem counter intuitive to say no to projects, ideas and enthusiastic teams. You want people to come on the journey, share your ambition and contribute to making it a reality but good intentions can lead to duplication and distraction. It isn’t easy, but saying no and ruthlessly prioritizing empowers teams to move from pilots to focused scaling. For us, this means working with the best partners to go big on 12 ‘lighthouse’ projects, transformational programs embedded across every area of the business that bring us closer to answering our three ‘What if?’ questions.  
5. Human biology is humbling and amazingly complex: Don’t be distracted by the hype. Scientists contributing to the Human Protein Atlas have identified about 1,800 proteins that they believe are possible targets for drugs. However, only about 600 of them are currently targeted by approved therapies. While we believe in the potential of AI to transform healthcare, from R&D to customer experiences, we acknowledge the need to first build strong foundations of cleaned and connected data. We are yet to tackle this as an industry and it’s a significant effort we are prioritizing across the company.

I’m often asked what attracted me to Novartis, and it’s this – the opportunity to be at the intersection between this leading global healthcare company and digital disruptors, all poised to transform healthcare. It was an irresistible challenge.

I’m convinced this is the decade we’ll take a leap of faith and make something special happen. When the brightest minds will converge to tackle the complexities of human biology, and with the power of data and digital bring medicines to patients faster as well as reimagine the patient experience at scale. We are committed to a digital transformation with big ambitions and while we know we can’t do this alone, we’re convinced that with the right partners we can take on this challenge together.