Global vs Local

Global vs Local

[00:00:00] Alexander: Welcome to another episode of the Effective Statistician. Today I want to talk about the separation that [00:00:10] I’ve seen again and again happening within big pharma companies. And if you’re not working for a big pharma company, but for CRO stay [00:00:20] tuned. You will benefit from this episode as well, because it is very important for you to understand certain behaviors, [00:00:30] certain problems within the big pharma companies.

[00:00:34] Alexander: Now there is a structure that is very similar [00:00:40] to all pharma companies. Small or big, they all have the same structure, at least if they have marketed [00:00:50] compounds. They have usually Pretty centralized R& D function, yeah, because we don’t [00:01:00] develop products for Germany or the U. S. or for Japan or whatsoever.

[00:01:04] Alexander: We develop products for the globe. So we have one R& D [00:01:10] function. And that is usually a so called global function. We have, very often, just One head [00:01:20] of R& D and there’s a, I don’t know, very often a VP of statistics or something like this. And this VP of statistics reports [00:01:30] into the head of R& D. Very often.

[00:01:33] Alexander: And, you know, maybe directly or maybe indirectly somehow. And many [00:01:40] statisticians work in this function. That function is very often responsible for clinical development, sometimes also [00:01:50] responsible for preclinical development and for statistics sometimes in, in other more global areas like manufacturing and things like [00:02:00] that.

[00:02:00] Alexander: Now the other side of the company is the more commercial side of the company. That [00:02:10] organization always has different levels. It will have a global level thinking about marketing and [00:02:20] a couple of these other functions that works on a global scale. You will usually have some kind of global marketing [00:02:30] head, a global medical affairs head, These type of people.

[00:02:35] Alexander: And then you will also have Local [00:02:40] heads and maybe sub local heads. So maybe something like a European and then a German or maybe that is a, there’s a [00:02:50] southeastern cluster or something like this. And then within this southeastern cluster, you have maybe another head that heads Greece, whatsoever. Yeah.

[00:02:59] Alexander: So [00:03:00] you will, for sure have these more local organizations and whether that is on a European level or on a country level doesn’t [00:03:10] matter so much. The difference is that all the sales really happens in the [00:03:20] local affiliates. In Germany, in Spain, In the Philippines, in Japan, in whatever [00:03:30] country, including also the US.

[00:03:34] Alexander: And very often there’s a [00:03:40] pretty significant separation between the people that support global and the people that support local. [00:03:50] And now they have Often different interests, different incentives, and they understand things [00:04:00] very, very differently. And that leads very often to challenges. Now I’ve worked in both local [00:04:10] and global organization.

[00:04:11] Alexander: And by the way, also international. Something that you could call a regional organization like a European organization or [00:04:20] international business unit organizations, these kind of things. In the global organization, people think about, okay, [00:04:30] what happens across the world? What is needed by everybody? Or at least by the major players, [00:04:40] yeah, like for example, it will be needed by Japan and U.

[00:04:44] Alexander: S. and Germany, and maybe a couple of other [00:04:50] important and big players. And then they will kind of focus on these activities and work on these things. Now the [00:05:00] local affiliates. may have very, very different perceptions about what is important for them. And [00:05:10] they may or may not be able to explain that to the global organization.

[00:05:18] Alexander: And that [00:05:20] usually creates tension. Typically, you hear things like, ah, these local people have no clue about what’s [00:05:30] going on, and what is the overall strategy, and they come up with all these kind of weird things. It’s a little bit like a Wild West. And [00:05:40] then, if you talk to the Local people, they speak about the global people and say like, Ah, these people in global, they have no clue what’s going on [00:05:50] with the physicians here in our country.

[00:05:53] Alexander: They have no clue about that we have a different health care systems than in the U. S. And all these kind of different [00:06:00] things.