Work Plan and Timeline

Pharma Futures 3 was centered around two workshops – in London and Mumbai – at which the Working Group explored current challenges and opportunities to better aligning business value with societal need.

The workshops were supported by in-depth research and interviews with experts from a diverse set of fields, including finance, social entrepreneurship, innovation and global health.

The findings of the project resulted in the February 2009 publication of Pharma Futures 3: Emerging Opportunities (Download Report).

Workshop One (April 2008). Hosted by Lehman Brothers in London, Workshop One looked at the critical stages of the pharmaceutical value chain and explored the management challenges and opportunities posed by healthcare needs, societal expectations, market opportunities, and government regulations. Innovative social enterprise models, including Aravind Eye Hospital, PATH and Project Impact were presented to drive discussion about the potential for innovation in the sector. The consensus of the Working Group was that a greater understanding of successful approaches to financing social innovation, developing new business models and partnering with social entrepreneurs in middle-income markets would provide useful insights going forward.

Research Streams (April – September 2008). Workshop participants were keen to better understand the following questions, which formed the basis of the project’s three streams of research:

• Unique Partnerships. What learning from non-traditional partnerships (e.g., partnerships with social entrepreneurs) could be applied to development of commercially successful models that also expand access to healthcare goods and services?
  
  
• Innovative Business Models. What successful models for innovating in highly regulated industries already exist in middle income markets, and can they be applied to the pharmaceutical/healthcare industry?
  
  
• Financing Social Innovation. Is it possible to develop new investment vehicles to support financially sustainable, scalable social business solutions? What is the business case for the relevance/applicability of such vehicles to the mainstream pharmaceutical industry and investment communities?

Workshop Two (October 2008). The findings of the research streams were discussed at Workshop Two, held in Mumbai in October 2008. Discussions focused on exploring specific high-priority areas for future actions and collaboration at various stages in the pharmaceutical value chain.