Executive Summary

Emerging global markets are a hot topic in pharmaceutical circles these days, but until recently, most Westerners viewed them as a homogenous cluster. Few executives at corporate headquarters drew distinctions among the various countries, let alone the domestic and international players in those markets. As big pharma bumps up against growth constraints in its traditional markets, however, interest in the "rest of the world" is perking up. The largest pharmaceutical companies are all looking at the same promising half dozen or so emerging countries, but they are taking radically different approaches to tackling them and are moving at different paces.