Why is Lilly research so impotent?

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Anonymous

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This is a serious question, not a cheap shot. Someone told me that the last drug to come out of the Lilly Research Labs was discovered in the 1980's (I think they said Zyprexa or Evista, but not sure). If that is true, why? You people seem smart enough, is it the structure of the organization? Management? What?
 






It's well known in the R&D community that LLY is not a place where creative science or innovation takes place. We drove all the inquisitive, risk takers out long ago.... Fact-
 












Anonymous said:
This is a serious question, not a cheap shot. Someone told me that the last drug to come out of the Lilly Research Labs was discovered in the 1980's (I think they said Zyprexa or Evista, but not sure). If that is true, why? You people seem smart enough, is it the structure of the organization? Management? What?
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The current corporate environment separates true science from career development...you can't do both. The real science it takes to develop a drug takes years of serious risk taking, challenging the status quo and lots of hard decisions. In the current environment, if a person actually does that, they virtually guarantee their career will go no where.

If you want your career to flourish, it is sad but you have to kiss the ass of your supervisors who in turn are kissing the ass of their supervisors. And with so many incompetent scientists at higher levels (not all, but enough), there is no way much novel science can get done.

So what we are left at are a bunch of easy shots-on-goal, along with third and fourth to market drugs with nothing new or novel.
 






...and to continue my previous thought, the current PM setup also discourages collaboration and encourages competition, pitting scientists against each other as the result of being forced into distribution curves at review time. This doesn't encourage people working together...but only out-working each other. This slows down data sharing and even encourages people to sabotage each other. It is sad because it doesn't have to be this way.
 












Msgs 4 and 5 are dead-on and some of the reasons that I left. After getting LS for two years with the only explanation being "you need to impact the business", I found out that my former mgr was trashing me at the concensus rankings. I gave my supervisor some hard evidence of how poor my former mgr was and bingo, my ranking went up. Sad that this is the way that the game is played in LRL.
 












Other posts have noted the vaguely-defined objectives of "career development" and "impacting the business" as detractors from accomplishing scientific goals. Another one is "visibility." Too often, scientists are called on to put time into efforts that do little to promote drug invention, but which gain visibility for those involved - particularly the one who promoted the contrived initiative.

A lot of science, particularly the practice of it at the bench, seems unremarkable, especially to non-scientists. Don't be too quick to blame the person alluded to in post 6. He is held accountable to a lot of people who are 1) powerful, and 2) not scientists. Consider that he may be the one barrier that prevents those people from derailing research work altogether.

In contrast to non-scientists, the lower level managing scientists should understand the value of what happens in the labs day-to-day and year-to year. Instead of appreciating and promoting it, they emphasize various visibility or career-building schemes that are designed to be conspicuous, and aren't much more than that. New drugs don't get invented that way.
 






Anonymous said:
Other posts have noted the vaguely-defined objectives of "career development" and "impacting the business" as detractors from accomplishing scientific goals. Another one is "visibility." Too often, scientists are called on to put time into efforts that do little to promote drug invention, but which gain visibility for those involved - particularly the one who promoted the contrived initiative.

A lot of science, particularly the practice of it at the bench, seems unremarkable, especially to non-scientists. Don't be too quick to blame the person alluded to in post 6. He is held accountable to a lot of people who are 1) powerful, and 2) not scientists. Consider that he may be the one barrier that prevents those people from derailing research work altogether.

In contrast to non-scientists, the lower level managing scientists should understand the value of what happens in the labs day-to-day and year-to year. Instead of appreciating and promoting it, they emphasize various visibility or career-building schemes that are designed to be conspicuous, and aren't much more than that. New drugs don't get invented that way.
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As The Eagles was said...."Get over it!"
 






Poor management. The last drug invented and launched by Lilly was Cymbalta (2003), the drug was actually first synthesized in the late 1980's. The worst disaster I think is the Biotech area under TB and his utterly incompetent managers. In 16 years these people have not come up with a single drug while burning through hundreds of millions of dollars. The AME fiasco needs to be shut down, I suspect it will fairly soon.
 


















Fear of failure at every level in discovery, of fear of backing the wrong people or the wrong project (but raised to an art form by the clinicians). The most divisive element is the P/R stratification, the most effective demotivator ever created. You, yes you, can you tell me who is going to have the next good idea, an R scientist or a P scientist. Thought not.
 






Anonymous said:
Fear of failure at every level in discovery, of fear of backing the wrong people or the wrong project (but raised to an art form by the clinicians). The most divisive element is the P/R stratification, the most effective demotivator ever created. You, yes you, can you tell me who is going to have the next good idea, an R scientist or a P scientist. Thought not.
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John says there will always be ups and downs.

Stock price up, your future down.

Do you have a problem with that?

Be thankful for such a strong leader.
 






The Autoimmune disaster is the worst...all me-too drugs which we somehow plan to sell without a dedicated sales force into markets dominated by established companies (J&J, Abbott, Amgen etc). Complete boondoggle.
 






Anonymous said:
The Autoimmune disaster is the worst...all me-too drugs which we somehow plan to sell without a dedicated sales force into markets dominated by established companies (J&J, Abbott, Amgen etc). Complete boondoggle.
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John said, without the corporate jets, the Imclone deal never would have happened.

Ergo, get rid of the corporate jets?

What bugs me is maybe 5000 employees paid for that mistake with their careers, and it wasn't their fault. An honorable CEO would at least give us some token hari-kari, maybe go without salary or pension for the rest of his life, and return all previous earnings. Either that, or ....
 
























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