The Summit Series is a series of six webinars exploring the concept of launch leadership. The second webinar in the series, once more hosted by Impatient Health’s Paul Simms, explored how teams can move from insight to decision – what that process looks like, the potential barriers in the way, and how we can get there faster and more accurately. For the first two episodes of the series, Paul was joined by a panel of launch leaders from AstraZeneca, and Grifols, alongside Within3’s CEO Lance Hill.
In session one, Paul and the panellists explored how, while the margin for error may be shrinking, launch leaders also have unprecedented opportunities to change launch trajectories. In session two, they moved on to a discussion about how a more modern launch model might be implemented and how that change could benefit pharma organizations.
If you missed either session, you can watch Summit Series webinar recaps here, or alternatively, read on to explore the eye-opening discussions and poll results captured from Summit Series 2: The Push to the Summit.
A reluctance to embrace change?
Before signing in to the session, attendees were asked where they might experience pushback if they tried to improve launch decision-making this year. The results were telling, not for any single answer, but for how evenly responses were distributed. Misaligned priorities between commercial and medical teams topped the list, cited by nearly a third of respondents. But close behind were fuzzy decision ownership, a gap between decisions and execution, insufficient trust in AI-assisted insight, and a lack of consensus on what constitutes “good enough” evidence. No single barrier dominated, suggesting that the challenges facing launch decision-making aren’t isolated – they’re systemic. That spread resonated with the panel.
“We all have biases, and we want to protect our roles, our territory, our silos, or our kingdoms within corporations. Technology’s job is to break that loose, and really stitch everything together to drive the most effective and efficient organization possible.”
– Mark Montgomery, VP Global Business Analytics & Commercial Excellence, Grifols
AstraZeneca’s Stacey Gorski saw the same data differently. “My first thought was, I actually don’t think I would get pushback,” she said. “The desire to become better, cheaper, faster is there.” The resistance, she argued, isn’t about willpower but about complexity. Launch is so multifactorial that changing any one element pulls on everything else. The desire for change is real; it’s the interconnectedness of launch that makes people hesitate.
The data backs Stacey up: nearly one in five respondents said that even when launch decision-making is strong, it doesn’t always translate to action. It’s the role of the launch leader – empowered by technology – to bridge that gap.
The changing role of launch leadership
As Paul pointed out, decision-ready intelligence is accelerating decision-making, improving accuracy and confidence, and delivering huge time efficiencies. Inevitably, this will change expectations on launch leaders, and transform the way they operate. Summit Series panellists discussed how pharmaceutical leadership roles might change to help accelerate decision velocity.
“I see the role of a brand or a commercial leader evolving even more,” said Mark Montgomery. “The expectation to communicate the integration of medical value and access – sales, marketing, competitive dynamics – rolls into the brand or commercial leader, who reports into the executive team. These roles are becoming much more complicated, and the pressure to understand all those little parts across the journey usually bubbles up to just one or two individuals. I see that role becoming much more dynamic; much more of a quarterback role.“
AstraZeneca’s Stacey Gorski examined how a different persona might be impacted by technology. “The first thing that came to my mind was the Medical Director role – their role is being transformed,” she told attendees. “They have an identity as scientific and medical experts, but what do you do in a world where AI can serve you up an answer?”
“Having a Medical Director that’s more versed in decision science or behavioral science – that’s the part where I think their role is going to be transformative.”
– Stacey Gorski, Head of Medical Excellence, US Oncology, AstraZeneca
In Stacey’s view, launch decision-makers have an opportunity to improve how they decide on a particular course of action, and the steps they take to get there. “I do think there should be more investment in decision science and people thinking about how they actually make decisions, because if you’re doing it based on gut or intuition, we know that’s biased and heuristic. How do we get better at that?”
If you’d like to know more about how bias affects decision-making at the highest levels – and how to fix it – read our blog post on confirmation bias and launch strategy.
Is role-based intelligence smart?
In the next section, Paul asked attendees and panellists whether taking a role-based approach was the best way to roll out decision-ready intelligence in pharma. Stacey agreed that it was, taking a change-management viewpoint: “If you do change management well, you avoid crisis management,” she said. Change can be intimidating for people, particularly where technology is concerned, and so Stacey feels involving people at a role-based level is the best way to reassure them. “It’s saying ‘I understand what role you do. Here’s how it’s going to change, here’s the opportunity, and here’s how you can be part of it’,” she added.
Mark, meanwhile, had a foot in both camps. “We need to make sure each role has the technology and the tools to optimize their job,” he said, “and we need to get away from the mindset of enterprise solutions versus role-based solutions. We need to start looking at role-based solutions – bespoke tools for the role.” Technology, however, plays a major role in breaking down silos, and Mark suggested that a top-down mindset would help to achieve cross-functional collaboration. “When you look at true enterprise, you really want to focus on the jobs to be done or the problems to solve, versus the individual,” he told attendees. “We want to embrace what technology can do to optimize the full value of an organization, versus optimize a role.”
Interestingly, session poll results suggested that the majority of respondents (39%) believe ‘one brand or asset’ is the best place to test a more modern launch model, versus just 12% who replied ‘one team or role’.
What stands in the way of adoption?
Despite differences of opinion on what an optimum rollout might look like, all of the Summit Series panellists agree that decision-ready intelligence will revolutionize pharma launch. So what’s standing in the way of adoption? According to Lance Hill, Within3 Founder and CEO, it can be as simple as an inability to imagine what might be achieved within constrained budgets. “For small and midsized companies, a lot of the times, it’s ‘we’re unaware of what’s possible’,” he said. “‘We don’t feel like we have a lot of funds or money to do the things that the bigger companies are doing’. It’s almost a lack of awareness, and a misunderstanding of the cost profile of some of these tools.“
Stacey Gorski, meanwhile, claimed that the multifactorial nature of launch makes change difficult, and used a vivid metaphor to describe how every decision has a knock-on effect. “Imagine you have an office – your desk and your chair and your couch – but imagine there’s a string tied to everything,” she explained. “So the chair is tied to your desk, which is tied to the lamp, which is tied to the couch. And so you think, ‘oh I can just move my chair up’. But as soon as you move your chair, the string pulls the lamp, which pulls the drawer, which pulls the couch. Launch feels like that. There are so many parts – if I change this, what’s the butterfly effect?”
The poll results seemed to reflect this idea. When asked, ‘what’s the biggest barrier to adopting a more modern launch model in your organization’, 26% of attendees answered that ‘ownership is too unclear to drive change’. When ownership is poorly defined, no one is empowered, so everyone is scared that they might be the one to pull the wrong string, so to speak. But to Lance’s point, a similar proportion – 23% – answered that budget is harder to unlock than belief – so even when teams are bought in psychologically, they aren’t necessarily prepared to do so financially.
The second Summit Series webinar sparked lively debate amongst panellists and drove significant engagement among attendees. We came away with insightful observations about how launch leaders might implement and deploy a more modern launch model, and how technology could change their roles moving forward. You can watch the full recap of the first two Summit Series webinars here.
