Good Omens and Bad Launches: Reading Early Signals to Break the Launch Curse

In a market that moves faster than most teams can coordinate, “good or bad omens” for a launch often appear early. The challenge is seeing them in time and aligning around what to do next. That was a core theme of the recent webinar featuring Paul Simms of Impatient Health and Within3’s Ian McKinnon.

The conversation blended industry data, real-world experience, and a practical look at how Launch Intelligence™ connects fragmented inputs so teams can act with confidence. Here are the key takeaways:

Pharma doesn’t fail on science, it fails on signal

Even products that look successful can leave performance on the table when teams miss or misread early indicators. Polling during the session confirmed what the data already suggests: most organizations know where they are vulnerable, but not how to connect the dots.

• Nearly 60% of new product launches miss expectations. The science is not failing; market execution is.^¹
• 47% of failed launches trace back to weak market understanding and 41% to poor differentiation, both symptoms of disconnected data.^¹
• Organizational agility now separates leaders from laggards. Teams that anticipate threats and rebound quickly hold a lasting advantage.²
• Data silos derail collaboration, leaving teams to make high-stakes decisions with outdated or incomplete inputs.³

Live polling echoed these gaps:

• Cross-functional agility emerged as the biggest weakness, followed closely by HCP adoption, clear signs that many teams still struggle to move in sync once the launch begins.
• When asked about blind spots, participants pointed to market shaping and early stakeholder sentiment as the hardest areas to track, reinforcing how easy it is to miss small shifts that later become big problems.
• On real-time signals, digital and social chatter ranked highest at 27%, with HCP sentiment, payer reactions, and competitor activity close behind, proof that the market is talking, but few teams are truly listening.
• When asked which signals they are weakest at capturing, respondents again cited digital and social data, suggesting a growing awareness of the gap between knowing where to look and acting on what is found.
• A behavioral barrier also stood out: 20% admitted their teams focus on data that confirms existing strategies rather than challenges them, a habit that can quietly stall progress.
• When it comes to agility, the numbers were sobering. Only 2% said their organization can pivot within days. Most take a quarter or longer, meaning many brands lose valuable time just aligning on what to do next.⁴

The takeaway: execution fails when signals are late, local, or lost. Recognizing that truth is the first step to breaking the launch curse. But success also depends on organizational agility and a culture that treats strategy as a living system: one that learns, adjusts, and moves faster than the market around it. As Paul Simms warned, “Complacency is pharma’s greatest disease.”

Missed signals compound quietly and cost millions

Launch performance rarely unravels overnight. More often, it is death by a thousand missed connections: early feedback that never leaves the field, negative congress sentiment that does not reach brand, payer updates that fail to inform targeting.

With connected signals, these weak indicators can surface in time to correct course. Without them, they grow into costly surprises: missed revenue, wasted media spend, and opportunity lost to faster competitors.

“A strategy is alterable, it’s adjustable. It’s meant to evolve and grow as you get more information.”
— Ian McKinnon, Managing Director, Within3

Connected signals turn noise into foresight

Here is how this works in practice:

In the morning, a spike in HCP questions at a congress booth mirrors what field teams captured overnight. Minutes later, a payer bulletin hints at an emerging access headwind. The system does not churn out another lengthy report; it stitches these threads together, aligns the timeline, and surfaces a clear recommendation: adjust messaging for cardiology specialists in the Southeast, arm reps with two new data points, and reallocate a portion of non-working media to targeted access pull-through.

By week’s end, the team sees measurable changes in prescribing intent and access metrics, and the learning becomes part of how every future decision is made. It is not hypothetical. Teams using Launch Intelligence™ today are already reallocating investment sooner and avoiding multi-million-dollar mistakes before they escalate.

When someone asked, “Can’t we just use ChatGPT?” the answer was simple. Generic AI summarizes. Launch Intelligence™ orchestrates. It turns the noise of the market into a cohesive, contextual view built specifically for pharma so decision-makers act with confidence, not guesswork.²

“Teams must ensure information is verifiable, confirmable, and reliable.”
— Ian McKinnon, Managing Director, Within3

The strongest teams don’t just move fast, they move early

Speed without clarity is chaos. The organizations that outperform are those that build connected muscle memory by linking the right data streams, setting “act now” thresholds, and closing the feedback loop after each decision.

That means collapsing decision cycles around what matters most: access pull-through, message refinement, targeting optimization, and wiring in the data sources that make those calls smarter. Define what “go” looks like before the moment comes. Then let the system handle the synthesis, scoring, and context so teams can focus on direction, not data cleanup.

When this loop repeats, the organization stops debating whose dashboard to trust and starts iterating on what works.

“People don’t buy light bulbs. People buy light.”
— Ian McKinnon, Managing Director, Within3

With better inputs and a clear operating rhythm, “the window of being able to adjust is now not only there, but is wider than it has been historically.”

The final omen: what you see first determines what happens next

Good omens and bad omens are always there. The advantage goes to teams that see weak signals early, connect them to context, and move decisively.

“Whether you have Launch Intelligence™ or not, one of your competitors might, and that should scare you.”
— Paul Simms, CEO, Impatient Health

If you are ready to explore how connected signals could change the way your team reads the market, request a demo with one of our experts today.

Sources

1. Deloitte. Drug launches reflect overall company performance: Key factors for successful drug launch. Deloitte Insights, February 2023.

2. Deloitte. Measuring the return from pharmaceutical innovation, 15th edition. Deloitte Centre for Health Solutions, March 2025.

3. Deloitte. Pharmaceutical market access and launch strategies. Deloitte Insights.

4. Within3 Webinar Poll Results, Good Omens, Bad Omens: Reading Early Signals to Break the Launch Curse, October 2025