Becoming a premier partner: Measuring, managing and changing partnering capabilities at Eli Lilly and Company

Abstract

When Eli Lilly and Company decided to expand its drug development by entering into strategic 'alliances' with other, usually smaller, biotechnology firms, the company committed to becoming the 'premier partner' in the pharmaceutical industry. To implement that commitment, Lilly needed a way to measure how well it performed as a partner. That seemed like a simple problem to solve. But the actual solution required Lilly to invent two new measurement instruments that it uniquely combined with an existing benchmarking instrument developed and administered by PricewaterhouseCoopers. The three tools serve complementary purposes. The PWC survey helps Lilly understand how it compares to other large pharmaceuticals as a desirable partner, Lilly's new survey provides a 'finer-grained' picture of large, individual alliances by focusing on the factors that make up many of the categories in the PWC survey. The other new tool, a focus group guide and protocol, allows Lilly to assess the health of smaller alliances and to probe areas of broad concern identified in the quantitative diagnostic surveys. Using this unique combination of tools to assess the 'health' of their alliances, Lilly and its partners are not only improving the performance of the individual alliances, they are also improving Lilly's overall capabilities as a partner.