Pressure points on pharmaceutical industry executives: what lies ahead?

Purpose - The pharmaceutical industry faces significant challenges in the immediate future, including drug safety, intellectual property in emerging markets, industry image, and the overall effect of marketing. To remain effective, pharmaceutical executives must translate these challenges to the industry into solutions, find relationships between individual issues, and group these issues into larger themes. The purpose of this paper is to study the issues that senior industry executives perceive the pharmaceutical industry faces and how they can organize these issues into high-impact "pressure points." Design/methodology/approach - Using a modified approach to the Delphi technique, 70 senior pharmaceutical industry executives rated issues facing the pharmaceutical industry. Their responses were then examined using factor analysis. Findings - The study concludes that concerns about the industry's future must be accompanied by a concerted effort to communicate and market the importance drugs play in improving and extending lives. Practical implications - These will influence political factors that effect new drug development. Originality/value - The study develops a list of potential major issues facing the industry over the next three to five years.