No room in pharma for a Jack-of-All-Trades?

A jack-of-all-trades company is one that creates and maintains its presence in a range of therapy areas and healthcare business domains. In some ways, there are merits to diversification and to having a wide product portfolio.

However, in the current state of the pharma industry, where payer influence dominates over market access activities, diversification may be stretching company resources and talents too thinly, placing the delivery of value and patient outcomes at risk. Along with patent expiry, decreased R&D productivity, the threat of generic competition, and a slew of other challenges, pharma companies are looking to make their business models leaner. Specifically, pure play (focusing on a few, specific pharmaceutical products) has become a key strategy to consider.

To diversify or not?