The vision of Life Science Leader is to help facilitate connections and foster collaborations in pharma and med device development to get more life-saving and life-improving therapies to market in an efficient manner. Connect, Collaborate, Contribute
Issue link: https://lifescienceleadermag.epubxp.com/i/216720
Contract Sourcing there. Often. Talk to them. Build a relationship — a network of relationships — based on what Genentech calls "value creation," the non-zero-sum game of mutual problem solving and balanced incentives between purchaser and suppliers. Most suppliers also have their own supply chain. Get to know the secondary and tertiary suppliers your immediate vendors depend on. Plan for contingencies in proportion to the risk you perceive there. Look for weak points, and, if possible, help your primary supplier figure out ways to strengthen them. Stockpiling reserves of raw material as backup for the next-step producer would be the simplest example of how a purchaser might act to protect a supplier. But opportunities for improvement will likely pop up in any such relationship, varying only by the type of goods or services supplied. The idea is to share the problem-solving mindset, with each side supporting the other. AT ODDS OR AS ONE There is another helpful approach sponsors can take — do an inventory of the problems you have caused for your supplier. You know what I'm talking about: rapid-fire, course-reversing changes; punting on regulatory issues and shifting responsibility to the supply side; forcing the other side to absorb unexpected costs… All that and more happen every day in this industry, effectively destroying any collaborative spirit or value creation that might already exist with the supplier, and certainly arresting any development of the relationship in a collaborative direction. The more damage you do with one or a few suppliers, the more difficult it will be to find new ones that will cooperate with you in a substantive way. Disappointment and cynicism breed deceit; as your reputation for problem-causing spreads in the supplier community, people will feel OK about feeding you the BS you want to hear without delivering the goods they lead you to expect. You may notice I've used the word "you" interchangeably to mean either purchaser or supplier, depending on the context. This is a journalist's privilege, or conceit, but also the most direct way of addressing both sides with equal engagement. For either, the style of communication determines how well your message is received and interpreted by the other; the substance of trust and reliability determines where the message leads. Will it be purchaser versus supplier, or purchaser and supplier — plying that great curved sea of product development together? December 2013 LifeScienceLeader.com 35