| Today, in the midst of the widely heralded
‘credit crunch’, we are witnessing how
changes to a global marketplace and
business models have made an impact
on the financial sector. In this field, an
incident in one country is now rippling its
way across the globe with the strength to
damage and, in some cases, topple large
organisations.
The question is how this
could happen and who really understood
the risks? If you look closely, the changing
dynamics of the pharmaceutical world also
face some of the same basic issues.
For all the sophistication and slick
operational performance at the heart
of global success, the need for any
commercial enterprise – including a major
pharmaceutical company – to regularly
identify and consider at each stage the
possibility of what could go wrong has not
diminished. If anything, it has increased,
whether it is a ‘big bang’ or something far
more insidious and systemic, because for
every benefit globalisation offers there are
potential pitfalls that a company ignores at
its peril.
RISK APPETITE
All companies take risks – it’s
a natural part of succeeding in a
competitive business environment. In
the pharmaceutical business, as in many
others, it’s part of the art of commercial
success to calculate a risk – the likelihood,
the need to take it, the consequences if
the risk becomes the reality – and to
plan your business moves accordingly,
whilst almost certainly incorporating a
healthy dose of risk prevention. That’s
the theory, at least; and when operating
in a globalised economy that has high
potential for risk at just about every step,
it should also be the practice. |
