I was curious after listening to a recent employee briefing... is Merck innovative given the changing landscape around us!? Looking at the stock performance for the past 10-20 years vs many other biotechs such as Amgen, Regeneron (our own Roy Vagelos) it seems that Merck is a languishing company. We talk about innovation - at one point leadership wanted us to believe that we could be like IBM in revolutionizing our model (who didn't see the many flaws in that logic?). We've introduced MGAMs, Customer Centricity, cleaned house at MRL, re-engaged our employees by telling them their best efforts were a "3" at best... Yet, we've lagged all other benchmarks over the past ten to twenty years. With the vast resources available to senior leadership, why aren't we stealing all the good ideas out there and innovating our way to growth? We're one of the most cash rich companies IN THE WORLD. If our leadership isn't innovating its way to growth, then isn't it fair to ask how they got into their positions and why are they still there? I hear all the complaints about regulation, government, IDS strategy (haha!) and I wonder if these people are just excusing their poor performance. Is it possible that big pharma's big problem is that it promoted sales people into leadership roles? Is it possible that the toxic culture within the organization is responsible for its complete lack of true innovation? Every day I see biotech booming while big pharma languishes. What gives?
MRL leadership is absolutely stupid. Weber, Parmee and others have done nothing. Get rid of them all.
Our leadership has, for approximately 20 years (+/- 5, max) felt a fundamental insecurity. An insecurity that one never discussed, but an insecurity that impacted hiring/promoting/re-orging decisions in a way that tended to put people that were less of a threat to Sr. Leaderships' future tenure into subordinate positions . These lesser (in, now, more way than one) subordinates then, in an environment where long-term mutual loyalty between Merck and her employees began appearing as less of an absolute, learned from their superiors and hired/promoted/re-org'ed in such a way as to increase the odds of their own personal professional survival. "With fewer strong internal candidates who have the knowledge and experience to replace me, I am relatively more secure in my role." became the new internal mantra. I'm sure that many of them acted in this way through sub-conscious motivations. I take this to be one of the fundamental drivers behind the development of our current culture in which excellence is feared and in which competitiveness is generally not of the healthy type. So no .... Merck is no longer Innovative. Too bad, as I'm sure the other oldsters on CP would agree, it was very much a big bunch of fun when we were both innovative and effective in almost all that we did.
It is similar to moral relativism, "all is well", when it is not. In other words- hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. This is followed by a totalitarian mindset to protect the intrenched powers i.e. management as is done in global dictatorships. This always leads to corporate and national decline. This is the short answer to the premise of "Is Merck Innovative".
MF was the last innovative site they had, but they closed it 4 years ago. The downward spiral will continue unabated.
What gives is process. And if you consider innovating doing assays externally we are great. FTEs are down - how can we innovate? Toxic culture - wishing it change. Starts at VP and Ex Dir level. Few in power have deep discovery efforts....most were let go or leave for better times. so toxic culture + process + no time to innovate + no discovery experience = zero. biotec - small, need to make smart choices and people are hungry. Here people just want to be powerful
Combining old drugs over and over and over and calling them new is not what most of us label as innovative. Merck lost its way a solid decade ago. This shell of an overvalued company is disgraceful with regard to innovation.
We are a pharmaceutical development and marketing company and how you reintroduce or innovate in that framework is a fundamental stupid question! One of the few ways is to change the marketing paradigm and move to contracts etc. and Merck has done that especially with the hospital and vaccine divisions...but basic pharma has stayed blended with the development of managed care organizations etc....however is most of the country a large majority of the practitioners are still independent of most constraints except the socialist government and insurance companies, which says a mouthful! No pharmaceutical company has done a great job (except Forest) and Merck has certainly done as well as most in confronting this issue! Forest just stuck with the old model and made it work as well as possible...Novartis and Pfizer started this with throwing more money and people at the doctors and buying the business with bribes! If you are a pharmaceutical sales professional then you've seen the Diovan bribes (just flat payola for being a 'consultant') and the Lipitor seeding studies ($100-200 per patient to start someone on Zocor on 10mg Lipitor and see the results) and nobody in the industry is better at hiding studies that are negative or paying for stupid show trials than Novartis and Pfizer (Diovan CHF & Lipitor in women)! So back to is Merck innovative...somewhat, in that the target has been moving rapidly for the past 20 years and Merck has always developed markets and produced innovative 1st time products! While you're degrading Merck just remember that by giving away bulk manufacturing and production techniques for vaccines and pharmaceuticals (WWII) and lipholization at the same time we pushed all the industry ahead 20 years! Pfizer didn't do that or Ciba or Geigy or Sandoz or Wyeth or any of the other laggards who are now dead and gone! Bitch all you want but Merck will still be in business tomorrow and your sad ass will still be complaining!
Still in business tomorrow? Probably. But in five years, the name "Merck" will be as long gone as "UpJohn" or "Parke Davis".
The author Gary Hamel mentions that true innovation is the creation of new wealth. This company is not creating new wealth, just squandering away what others built. Now it has to steal others products (reverse merger) Remicade, and sell off businesses to pay its bills. Merck management has mastered stealing from employees and not paying corporate taxes. What a disgrace. Ethics, yeah right.
Merck has been very innovative in how they blame the employees for all the problems and continue to fire them. Shit really does go downhill here.
Merck is innovative Innovative at telling its employees that a 0.5% AIP is good Innovative at re-orging and shuffling one brain dead director to another department to destroy Innovative at annually giving the employees engagement surveys then ignoring the root cause of the poor results. Innovative at bolstering the sycophants and yes men and stifling any real technical or scientific knowledgeable people. Innovative at BSing the employees that this is the best there is and you can't do any better than this company And many more
It will be exceeding pleasant when the multitudes on these threads are terminated and booted out the door. Useless pathetic morons.
