A Process and Enterprise Maturity Model (PEMM) Analysis of the Hampered Big Pharma Drug Discovery Process

Abstract: The big pharma drug discovery process is currently hampered by long lead times, high costs, and fre-quent failures. On the other hand the general view is that many small pharmaceutical and biotech com-panies are more successful in terms of preclinical drug project transitions, and many small companies and/or their projects are bought by big pharma. In this thesis we investigated if the Business Process Reengineering (BPR) and the Process and Enterprise Maturity Model (PEMM) approaches by Hammer are suitable for the big pharma R&D process and if these approaches could shed any light on where potential improvements in the process can be made. A number of people with work experience from both big pharma and biotech preclinical R&D were also interviewed regarding the BPR and PEMM approaches and also regarding general organizational and pro-cess differences between biotech and big pharma. Our findings suggests that where suitable, most of the BPR principles have already been implemented in big pharma R&D, and that the PEMM approach at large, is suitable for the industry. Further, the inter-views revealed that there is a stronger focus on the core science and project work, and much less focus on processes, in biotech compared to big pharma. Despite a higher focus on control in terms of pro-cesses and metrics, the big pharma R&D process suffers, indicating a need to strengthen the process cul-ture if these processes should remain and add value to the organization.