Nearly a year into his tenure at Accenture, Urbaniak has already achieved one of his stated goals: building a life sciences consultancy custom-tailored to the demands and realities of the mobile/digital era. He did so by doing what he’s always done during a 20-plus-year career in healthcare, much of it spent at Sanofi: innovating relentlessly and meticulously. “I’ve been fortunate to find another environment in which collaboration and entrepreneurship are really highly valued,” he says. “I don’t take it for granted that every company is like this.”
Shortly after his arrival at Accenture, Urbaniak described his new gig as “the closest thing I’ll get to my own business in a large organization,” and the months since have borne out that characterization. He’s pushed the brand teams with which his practice works to employ more real-world data and analytics, and early results are promising. “People say, ‘Good luck getting anybody in pharma to change,’ but our experience has been nothing like that. The industry is ready to move forward.”
