Pharma Veterans

Scaling Up the Organization as it Grows 10 – Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #530 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #530. Pharma Veterans welcome sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Continued from Previous…… The last nine posts covered the challenges to scaling up in some detail. Much more can be written about it, but I believe the picture is fairly clear, and we can now move to solutions. SUM UP  The rather long list of challenges can be summed up under fewer broad heads. People, Infrastructure, Processes, and Resources may be listed as major heads in which work needs to be done. SOLUTIONS – PEOPLE People are central to all efforts because people make the organization and run it. Following measures should be considered. Engagement – emplo...

Scaling Up the Organization as it Grows 9 – Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #529 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #529. Pharma Veterans welcome sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Continued from Previous…… Value System Every organization has a value system. Having said that, the value systems are not the same, these have many shapes and shades. Most organizations do not formally recognize their value system, much less document it. Values evolve over long periods of time through contributions of owners and the employees. An organization is like a family, if a family allows lying, the children end up lying. When the father tells the children to tell the visitor he is not home while he is sitting right there, he is teaching them two values. One, t...

Scaling Up the Organization as it Grows 8 – Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #528 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #528. Pharma Veterans welcome sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Continued from Previous…… Processes and Procedures Development We now take up the topic of Processes and Procedures Development. This is the last but one topic before we sum up the whole discussion, but it is not the last in priority. Actually, everything in the realm of development is happening simultaneously. More on this later. Processes – prevail even at the tiniest size. An organization is a living organism, and every organism has all needed sensory and motor functions: Hiring, staffing, accounting, administration, buying, producing, trading, marketing, selling,...

Scaling Up the Organization as it Grows 7 – Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #527 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #527. Pharma Veterans welcome sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Continued from Previous…… Product and Service Development We continue to discuss the challenges in scaling up of products and/or services. Quality Control – is a critical area to look for while scaling up. It is easy to understand that maintaining quality of smaller volumes is easier than doing the same for larger volumes. It is also understood that increase in demand would put pressure on delivery time also, which in turn may create a stress on quality. Three challenges/ areas-to-handle may be considered regarding quality control during scaling up. One, is the capac...

Scaling Up the Organization as it Grows 6 – Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #526 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #526. Pharma Veterans welcome sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Continued from Previous…… The subject of ‘People’ is large and can be talked about more, but we leave it here and look at the challenges faced in scaling up the product and service offering.  Most small and medium enterprises are started by people who possess the relevant skill for that product or service. It has undeniable advantages. One, the entrepreneur knows all about her/his trade and can manage better. Two, they will not be entirely dependent on hired people to run the business. Three, they will be less likely to be manipulated by staff which may have ill ...

Scaling Up the Organization as it Grows 5 – Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #525 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #525. Pharma Veterans welcome sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Continued from Previous…… We continue to look at challenges and issues faced during scaling up the organization. People Development Most Small/Medium enterprises have no system in place for people development. People may learn on their own and develop on their own. Unguided and unfocused development leads to retarded or stalled development. When it is desired that a bigger responsibility may be given to someone, it becomes difficult to find appropriate ‘someone’. People development used to be the personal philosophy of all managers previously. The organizations also p...

Scaling Up the Organization as it Grows 4 – Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #524 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #524. Pharma Veterans welcome sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Continued from Previous…… Merit for People Growth What should be the eligibility criteria for growth in an organization? It remains highly variable and is open to conjecture. Performance at job is not certainly the top criteria, though it should be. For most entrepreneurs, loyalty is more important than all other things, including performance. The commonest perception among small/medium entrepreneurs is that they run their enterprise solely and no one else has any worthwhile role in the overall scheme of things. That is the reason loyalty without question is considere...

Scaling Up the Organization as it Grows 3 – Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #523 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #523. Pharma Veterans welcome sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Continued from Previous…… We stay on the topic and see what the obstacles in the way of scaling up are. Our local issues are different from the ones seen in large organizations on international scale. Future Vision Vision can only come from the top. The entrepreneurs deserve special respect and admiration for the courage they show in taking risks, and for the untiring efforts they invest to establish an enterprise from scratch. It is reasonable to assume that something must be driving them from within. It may be the vision of future, the urge to do something or the de...

Scaling Up the Organization as it Grows 2 – Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #522 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #522. Pharma Veterans welcome sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Continued from Previous…… Our handling of scaling up challenge starts here. Adding More People This is the first response in all departments. The demand comes from the departmental head and the pressure keeps mounting. The sales have increased, so the sales team head(s) wants more salespeople. Number of employees will increase, so the HR needs more staff to handle their matters. Revenue has increased, so the finance needs more staff. Demand for production has increased, so the production needs more staff in production, quality, warehousing, logistics etc. More materia...

Scaling Up the Organization as it Grows 1 – Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #521 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #521. Pharma Veterans welcome sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Every business aspires to grow over time. Even this phrase is becoming redundant now as the fortunes are being made and lost in short spans of time in the digital world. But we are talking about regular businesses which are established and run and grown over time. My context is as usual Pharma Industry and the setting is Pakistan. When I started working 46 years ago, every company, even the biggest ones, were actually small. They sold products across the country, but the scale was always small. The smallness showed in everything: the offices were small, production uni...

Gene Therapy Progress III – Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #520 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #520. Pharma Veterans welcome sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Continued from Previous…… It would have become clear by now that the most important link in the chain of gene therapy is the ‘Vector’. Vectors transport the genes or gene-modified cells to the target site in human body. We shall conclude this topic with a discussion on Vectors and the challenges faced by the gene therapy. In the earlier part, I had mentioned that viruses are the most favored vectors. McKinsey published a report recently about the ‘promise of viral vectors’, and I shall partake some portion from there. I shall try to stay away from heavy technicalities and keep it sim...

Gene Therapy Progress II – Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #519 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #519. Pharma Veterans welcome sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Continued from Previous…… The Human Genome Project, which ran from 1990 to 2003, provided researchers with the basic information about the genetic content of human organism. The discovery opened many new avenues and opportunities in various fields. Healthcare could also be a great beneficiary of genetic research. National Human Genome Research Institute, working as part of NIH in USA is focused on application of genome knowledge in healthcare. Researchers at the NHGRI are working with patients and families to better understand how genes can cause or influence diseases and develop new ...

Gene Therapy Progress I – Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #518 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans’ Blog Post #518. Pharma Veterans welcome sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Gene therapy may be much less known in Pakistan, but it is progressing rapidly in the developed world. Owing to the vast potential and promise it holds, Big Pharma and Small Biotech companies are racing to find new therapies. Big Pharma has deep pockets of its own, while Small Biotech are being liberally funded by VCs - Venture Capital firms. Promises of gene therapy are mainly two: one, the possibility to treat some yet untreatable diseases; two the potential to make unprecedented amounts of money. We shall focus on the innovation for good part only. Gene Therapy “Gene therapy is a te...