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R&D Frameworks like AstraZeneca’s ‘5Rs’ have significantly boosted success. Yet, the variability in outcomes among different teams working with the same drug candidates suggests that technical excellence alone isn’t sufficient. Here we explore the power of expanding the 5 Rights to include the people relates aspects of R&D productivity.
Many of the pharma industry’s biggest players have made big leaps in terms of R&D. That is thanks to frameworks they have developed, such as AstraZeneca’s 5Rs.
The 5 Rs is credited with a 5-fold increase to 19% of the organization’s pipeline molecules completing Phase III clinical trials. Here is how Astra Zenica describes its 5 Rs framework:
1. Right target: Uncover, select, and validate new targets with a strong link to disease.
2. Right tissue: Ensure that new drug candidates have bioavailability and display the right effect in the intended tissue.
3. Right safety: Establish safety as far as possible in humanized systems before initiating clinical trials.
4. Right patient: Recognize that patients have unique genetic, molecular, and functional disease profiles, and target medicines to populations who will derive the greatest benefit.
5. Right commercial: Develop a unique value proposition new medicines based on the size and unmet needs of the target patient population.
These five elements are key to optimizing pharmaceutical R&D. But what might be missing? For example, if you gave the same asset or drug candidate to two different teams (using the 5Rs) would the results be the same?
Probably not, is the answer that most people would give. Not even if the two teams were in the same organization!
In our book (Super Projects), this is what we call ‘the Two Teams Hypothesis’ and it is at the centre of a new area called ‘R&D-P’, that is the people-related aspects of R&D Productivity.
To test the hypothesis, we added an extra 9 Rights to the existing 5 Rights. This time focused on ways of working within the team.
The 9 Rights for a drug development team are:
- All the Right People,
- In the Right Roles,
- Doing the Right Work,
- At the Right Time,
- Working together in the Right Way,
- In the Right Place,
- With the Right Tools and Resources,
- And the Right Rewards,
- To achieve the Right Results.
That is a total of 9 factors that determine the level of R&D-P of a product or franchise team.
Independently, we gathered lots of data to test the ‘Two Teams Hypothesis’. The result is that adding the 9 Rights to the 5 Rights (or other R&D framework), has the potential to directly boost R&D Productivity by between 2% and 6%, with the potential for even greater indirect benefits.
Thus, the 9 Rights emerge as a tool to help teams to optimize, not just their work, but how it gets done. Especially at a time of intense pressure on performance and tight deadlines, as well as budget cuts and scarce resources.
Working on the 9 Rights can help teams to bring out the best in each other and get the most from their work.
You will find the 9 Rights tool and associated research in Super Projects.
Details of free webinars on the 9 Rights & ways of working in Pharma can be found in the notes.
Please reach out, if we can help you in leveraging this framework to support your hardworking teams in their important work.
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