What Nonbiopharma Company Do You Anticipate As Being The Biggest Disruptor To Our Industry?

A: IT IS A TOSS-UP BETWEEN SAMSUNG AND APPLE. Reason: digital health is upon us and promises to transform drug R&D and its economics. But to enable it, one needs mobile computing/storage, wireless transmission, and the cloud. Several companies offer that, including Google, Microsoft, and Qualcomm, but Samsung and Apple clearly dominate the market with a joint market share of 70 percent of smartphones in the U.S. In addition, they are in this to sell devices, while Google and Microsoft’s business models rely on reselling user data to all comers. With health data, that’s a big problem since consumers are more concerned about privacy and more likely to embrace providers that will protect their data, as Apple has done. Samsung and Apple also offer manufacturing know-how to device innovators, resulting in richer, more robust, and better-integrated platforms.

BERNARD MUNOS
is the founder of the InnoThink Center for Research in Biomedical Innovation. Previously, he served as advisor in corporate strategy at Eli Lilly focused on disruptive innovation and the radical redesign of the R&D model.