Relationships with other businesses are increasingly significant to pharma success. How can you form and nurture low risk, high reward relationships?
With collaboration of all kinds the signature of the successful pharma of the future, what will these intimate new relationships look like? Nostrapharmus predicts that the closer and more transparent they are, the better it will be for your business. But for the major pharmaco, the awkward question is "How can I learn to be lovable?"
Good relationships – a core competence of the future
Pharma has always bought services from a horde of other businesses. But were these significant relationships or one‑night stands?
There is an accelerating progression away from such commercially‑dominated, single‑point transactions towards greater intimacy and understanding of each other's businesses, greater continuity of contact, involvement and sharing.
Think of a ladder of relationship quality. On the lowest rung people say truculently "you get what you pay for". As we climb, we find businesses share ideas, practice and information. There is an ever‑sharper, ever more continuous focus on performance improvement. Mutual benefit grows. The relationship makes an increasing contribution to the future of both parties. At the top of the ladder are the relationships with real staying power, the ones that survive adversity and success alike. They are characterised by incremental benefits over time beyond the expectation the parties had at the outset: it pays to stay hitched!
But corporate relationships are not the same as personal ones. Are they? Well, they certainly share important features - and don't corporate relationships rather depend on human interaction anyway? I'd say it's about 60:40 between getting a sound business framework for collaboration and getting the people part right. But you have to do both!
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