What are the responsibilities and job description for the Senior Director, New Product Strategy & Innovation position at Ipsen?
At Ipsen, our vision is to be a leading global mid-size biopharmaceutical company, with a focus on transformative medicines in three key therapeutic areas: oncology, rare disease, and neuroscience.
A key strategic focus for us to meet this objective is the creation of a balanced and sustainable pipeline that drives commercial success through delivering value to patients’ lives.
The New Product Strategy & Innovation Team is responsible for leading the end-to-end process of setting the therapeutic area strategies, bringing in external assets with our global partnering colleagues, and establishing and implementing early commercialization and pre-launch plans to maximize asset value.
In the last 2-years we have brought in over 20 new assets into our pipeline, and looking forward we will continue to grow and advance this pipeline while launching products across therapeutic areas. As such, the New Product Strategy & Innovation team is expanding its capacity, capabilities, and responsibilities to ensure that we meet the overall objectives and vision of Ipsen’s growing portfolio for patients.
To support this vision, the Senior Director, New Product Strategy & Innovation role will directly contribute to:
Support External Innovation / New Product / Portfolio Strategy:
Education / Certifications:
A key strategic focus for us to meet this objective is the creation of a balanced and sustainable pipeline that drives commercial success through delivering value to patients’ lives.
The New Product Strategy & Innovation Team is responsible for leading the end-to-end process of setting the therapeutic area strategies, bringing in external assets with our global partnering colleagues, and establishing and implementing early commercialization and pre-launch plans to maximize asset value.
In the last 2-years we have brought in over 20 new assets into our pipeline, and looking forward we will continue to grow and advance this pipeline while launching products across therapeutic areas. As such, the New Product Strategy & Innovation team is expanding its capacity, capabilities, and responsibilities to ensure that we meet the overall objectives and vision of Ipsen’s growing portfolio for patients.
To support this vision, the Senior Director, New Product Strategy & Innovation role will directly contribute to:
- Evolution of the Therapeutic Area & Franchise Strategies
- Commercial leadership of external asset evaluations in strong collaboration with the Global Partnering & External Innovation Team
- Commercial leadership of all internal pipeline assets including early commercial phase 1-2 assets and pre-launch Ph 3 assets until transition to the in-line asset lead and brand team
Support External Innovation / New Product / Portfolio Strategy:
- Lead and update the external innovation strategies across therapeutic areas and present recommendations to executive leadership
- Apply the therapeutic area strategies to the determination of external innovation and business development priorities
- Identify and implement opportunities to enhance the business development assessment process
- Work with regional and country brand leads as appropriate to capture relevant market knowledge and unmet needs
- Represent commercial team and leadership in all business development and external innovation activities
- Be the commercial lead across all stages of the business development & external innovation process including sourcing, triage, business case development and due diligence
- Survey the market for new opportunities and indications to support asset sourcing & triage
- Establish a strong external expert network in current and target disease areas to understand new asset potential and unmet needs
- Work with Global Partnering & External Innovation to seek out new opportunities proactively as well as providing detailed feedback on assets in triage
- Attend relevant external meetings e.g., academic congresses and business development forums to identify and capture new opportunities for Ipsen
- Lead in-depth commercial evaluation process (e.g., current & future landscaping, secondary and primary market research, forecasting, pricing & access assessment, SMM estimation, etc.) to inform commercial evaluation and diligence
- Be a proactive partner and work collaboratively with cross-functional teams (e.g., business development, external innovation, medical affairs, R&D, regulatory, finance, countries, global pricing & access, business excellence) to support inputs required for commercial modelling & business case development
- Ensure streamlined, efficient, and quality content generation across all evaluations aligning with internal processes
- Own & present New Product Strategy & Innovation recommendations to cross-functional team and executive leadership teams
- Work closely with other counterparts across franchises to share best practices and business opportunities
- Commercial lead for integration of new assets across phases 1 – 3 into Ipsen pipeline
- Apply deal case assumptions to inform initial clinical trial development programs
- Proactively identify opportunities for clinical development program enhancement through application of substantive product development experience, including translation of commercial objectives into trial design considerations in collaboration with cross-functional colleagues
- Rigorously evaluate alternative development pathways and provide commercial input into optimal development priorities including selected indications, trial design, and trial endpoints in collaboration with R&D colleagues
- Apply best-in-class launch planning considerations to earlier phase development, including consideration of global value and access and other commercialization critical success factors
- Clearly characterize commercial vision for the asset at all phases of development and lead strategy and pre-launch plan transition to asset lead
- Generally serve as the ‘brand champion’ for early assets to ensure organizational focus and alignment
- Provide guidance and best practices to the New Product Strategy & Innovation team regarding optimization of commercial input into early pipeline development
- Support the VP, Global Head New Products Strategy & Innovation to identify and deploy relevant training, development and coaching of the team to maximize team growth, performance, and organizational impact
- Including bi-monthly learning sessions, mentoring, external talent evaluation, on-boarding, template/tools and best-practices development
Education / Certifications:
- Advanced degree (PhD, MD, or MS) in Life Sciences-related discipline and/or an MBA
- Fluency in spoken and written English, knowledge of additional languages such as French would be helpful.
- A minimum of 7 - 10 years’ experience in Global Marketing or Global Portfolio Management roles within the biopharmaceutical industry, including experience in early commercial planning, disease area strategy, business development activity, and forecasting
- Strategy consulting experience in life sciences (including work in early-commercial strategy, commercialization, LCM, BD, due diligence, etc.) is highly valued
- Experience developing cross-functional pre-commercialization plans within pharmaceutical company or management consulting
- Experience in working across a cross-functional matrix team to meet deliverables on time and budget
- Strong scientific, medical, and commercial experience in oncology, neuroscience and/or rare diseases with a proven knowledge of clinical pipeline planning, business development, and launch activities
- Competitive landscaping experience
- Deep strategic marketing expertise (including positioning, targeting, segmentation, launch planning, life cycle management)
- Strong business acumen and understanding of global markets
- Excellent analytical skills and strategic thinking, including forecasting and business case development
- Strong communication and presentation skills
- Sense of urgency and experience in delivering parallel workstreams efficiently
- Qualitative & quantitative market research experience
- Strong planning and project management skills
