The pharmaceutical industry has a hard time saying goodbye to strategic assets. In fact, it’s much more adept at welcoming new ones: diversification – either geographic or into areas beyond pure-play pharmaceuticals – has become commonplace, even among those longtime proponents of so-called white pills in Western markets strategies. Fixed asset de-scaling is in progress across the industry, to be sure, but this kind of infrastructure shrinkage is merely a long overdue realization that much of what pharma considered proprietary advantage has become commoditized.
But pharma needs to overcome its entrenched resistance to asset externalization, which should become a critical third leg in its...
