It is a truth universally acknowledged that a new market in possession of unmet need will reward its first entrant with commercial advantage. Except, that “truth” may be somewhat overstated.
This was the topic of our recent webinar, “The First to Market Myth: What Really Drives Launch Success?”. During the session, Evaluate consultants Mark Lansdell, Tiffany Chan, and Duncan Sweeney shared some recent analysis of 180 product launches over a 20-year period. The goal was to understand whether companies should still bestow great weight on the importance of being first to market.
If you missed the webinar, I urge you to check out the on-demand recording, particularly if you’re part of a portfolio strategy team. If you don’t have time to do that right now, here are three things we learned in the session:
- First to market advantage is easily overstated. There are well-established benefits to being first to market, such as the ability to maximize patent life and faster return on investment. However, the data from our analysis does not support racing to be first to market simply for the sake of being there first.
- Therapy areas matter. The analysis broke down launches by therapy area and found significant variations. This means that during the R&D process, it’s vital that pharma companies carefully consider which indications to prioritize and balance first in class versus best in class.
- Detailed forecasting is critical. In trying to create that best-versus-first balance, there’s not room for back-of-the-envelope prediction. Portfolio strategy teams need to build out data-rich prioritization models that include elements like patient-based forecasting in order to make the right decisions about key areas like clinical differentiation as they plan a launch.
The full webinar dives deeper into the data and provides some really useful recommendations for portfolio strategy teams. If you want to explore these findings further and understand how they can impact your strategic decisions, watch the on-demand version. Or you can learn more about how our consultants can help you plan your journey to market here.
Perhaps this is best summed up with a quote from Mark Lansdell from the webinar: “perhaps being first isn’t everything you might have thought it would be cracked up to be.” It’s not Austen, but it’s worthy of consideration.
