Joe Jimenez isn’t interested in lamenting the state of theindustry. He’s focused on one thing: adapting Novartis to thrive in a mercurialenvironment.
“We’re not going to complain—we’re going to change,” Jimenezsays. “Long-term prospects are incredibly positive if you can find a way aroundshort-term negatives, such as regulatory challenges, tougher pricing, shiftingcustomer base, and generic competition. My objective is to position Novartis towin.”
Jimenez took the pharma division helm in Basel, Switzerland,last October, having joined Novartis in April as head of consumer health. Hespent 22 years at consumer companies, including H.J. Heinz, as president andCEO of North American and European business; ConAgra, as president of twooperating divisions; and The Clorox Co., where he began his career afterreceiving his MBA from UC Berkeley. Jimenez served as a non-executive directorof AstraZeneca, and was an advisor for Blackstone Group before joiningNovartis.
“It’s great to have someone who grew up in a differentindustry because he’s in no way constrained by the past,” says Mike Nohaile,head of strategic planning, Novartis pharmaceuticals division. “He’s interestedin where we are now and where we’re going.”
Jimenez is driving change in development, sales,productivity and culture. “Historically, development decisions were made in avacuum,” he says. “They were made functionally as opposed to cross-functionally.Making decisions led by scientific development professionals withcross-functional support will help us bring drugs to market faster and with agreater chance of regulatory success.”
Novartis is “geo tailoring” its sales force to fit particularmarkets. In “closed markets,” like Minnesota or the UK, sales teams engagepayor organizations that dictate what’s prescribed. Jimenez’s consumerexperience helped inform the adaptation. “When the consumer packaged goodsindustry consolidated, retail players had greater influence on what waspurchased,” he explains. “It shifted into key account management as opposed totransaction management.”
“The old BigPharma model would be ‘one size fits all,’” Jimenez continues. “Having seniorpeople up against providers in closed markets is a much different job thantraditional sales people have done. They’re more general managers, and we’vefound talent internally. Where physicians are making decisions, we’ll stick tothe traditional model.”
Increasing productivity helps insulate against pricepressures, and it frees up more funds for development and marketing. Bystreamlining and reducing layers teams must go through to execute, he says thecompany is “not getting stuck in the bureaucracy Big Pharma is famous for.”
Nohaile says Jimenez is good at challenging basicassumptions. “He’ll look at things—capital structure, inventory levels, orwhatever—and question why we do it that way,” Nohaile explains. “Sometimes wehave a good answer. Sometimes we say we do it that way because we’ve alwaysdone it that way. Often, he’s able to point out [a better way].”
With FDA approval of Galvus stalled, focus is on a spring EUlaunch. “We [will] continue to attempt to get the product into the US usingdata we have from the rest of the world,” he says. “I don’t want to engage in a20,000-patient study that takes three years and hundreds of millions of dollarswithout the guarantee of getting it into the US. FDA approval is too uncertainto make that kind of investment.”
Jimenez, a collegiate all-American swimmer and team captainat Stanford University, says competitive swimming built inner strength that hestill draws upon. “I used to tell exhausted teammates that ‘sometimes the onlyway out is through,’” he recalls. “We know the way through and just have toexecute to the end of the season.”
HEADLINER STATS
Joseph Jimenez
Chief executive officer, Novartis Pharma AG
2006-2007
Advisor, Blackstone Group
2002-2007
Non-exec. director, AstraZeneca
1998-2006
President, CEO, NA-Europe, H.J. Heinz Company
From the May 01, 2008 Issue of MM+M - Medical Marketing and Media
