Crystal ball gazing is a tricky, sometimes futile, endeavor. No one knows what the future holds, but there are consistent scenarios emerging that are being debated by industry leaders as they try to foretell and outsmart key market catalysts expected to ripple across the biopharma sector in 2020. With insights from executives, investors and consultancies, as well as our own experts, In Vivo can paint a picture of biopharma wins and woes expected in the new year and new decade.

Drug pricing and access issues expose the pharmaceutical sector especially acutely to calls for companies to meet ethical and social goals, alongside commercial ones. Digital is up-ending pharma’s processes, its workplaces and its consumers. R&D productivity is spluttering. Amid this turmoil, CEOs highlight company culture – the way an organization behaves – as a crucial ingredient for success. But what is a “right” culture? Organizational culture is neither static nor singular. It is continuously influenced by acquisitions, markets, new technologies and new generations. And pharma’s history suggests that culture change cannot happen without sufficient people change.

The best-seller rankings today are testament to the great success of antibody drug technology developed at the end of the last century, and contrast with the dominance of primary care small molecule drugs that powered big pharma in previous decades. But where did these drugs come from – and where are they going?

Acquisitions and licensing are core to pharma and big biotech growth as pipelines thin and assets lose patent protection. Looking back at significantly sized acquisitions over just five years reveals that half of 2014’s acquisitions can already be judged as outright failures or, at best, questionable. But some lessons can be learned from dud deals.