US based pharmaceutical companies have lots to consider when tackling the European commercialization path. The operational aspects of the journey such as PReMA (Pricing, Reimbursement, and Market Access) strategies can become all consuming. This often means considerations required around the cultural appropriation of an international management team can be missed in the early stages. When in fact they are essential conversations.

During a recent Virtual Demy Colton Salon, the topic was discussed at length by upper-management professionals. These professionals were from US life science companies who are operating in Europe. The focus was on how critical cultural awareness is for success in a foreign setting.

We talked about these differences in our first article on cultural diversity. But now, we consider the discussion that took place in this virtual salon, plus our own experience at Solem.

For the purpose of this article, we decided to focus on the biopharmaceutical industry, and what adjustments an American management team needs to make to mitigate the cultural issues that arise when tackling an international market – specifically the European one.

Understanding that you’re Global

David Meeker (CEO of Rhythm Pharma) mentioned in the Demy Colton salon that;

“If you are doing clinical trials globally, you are global, and getting management teams to realize this fact and take advantage of it is hard”.

Having and promoting a global mindset should follow a top-down model. CEOs and leaders need to set the example and endorse it as a corporate value. Whether you’re:

• building your own international structure,
• conducting clinical trials in other countries (especially in the rare disease market),
• or partnering outside of the US,

understanding and adjusting to cultural differences is crucial.

Making sure your team shares the same vision, global awareness, and ambition can sometimes be a challenge. It needs to be continuously reinforced as it is easy to slip back into normal national boundaries.

Finding talented people

When entering a European market, resource strategies will vary from biopharma to biopharma. Among varying options, some pharmaceutical organizations would prefer to hire local talent in each country. Others would prefer to send their US employees to lead and manage those opportunities for a long or short term.

Whatever you do, it is important to find the best people who are capable of operating in a multinational environment. It’s also important they are aligned with your vision, mission, and core values.

Barry Gene (CEO of Sage Therapeutics) mentioned that the European team you’re hiring should be educated to a relevant standard with great communication skills. This empowers them to voice their opinions confidently in meetings where participation of their US peers is very often higher. US team members, on the other hand, need to not only have language skills, but also good geographic knowledge. This will help them understand, for example, the geographical and cultural differences between the European countries.

Build strong relationships

Building a strong relationship with people you work or negotiate with requires trust and effort. As an example, during Market Access work in Europe, having valuable relationships and the right local contacts is critical to ensuring your drug is commercially valuable and accessible to patients.

Building these relationships, with employees that don’t share your culture and native language can be challenging for American leaders when managing international teams.

For challenging opportunities, being in-language and local is a huge advantage in building trust. Some biopharma’s contract an advisory and management company like Solem to mitigate such challenges. This is because we already have these relationships established in Europe through our local teams.

Being Conscious

In global biopharma’s, American teams may need to be reminded that not everyone in the group is from the US, or works in the East/West coast time, or are English native speakers. That requires patience, plus a lot of training and cultural consciousness.

When setting up an office in Amsterdam, for example, a hot spot for life science companies where diversity is considered very high, you will be working with people from all ethnicities and being conscious of your differences is critical. Also, knowing that communication will not always be live through virtual meetings due to time restraints, or will indeed take place outside of their own regular working hours is part of the adjustments US based teams need to be aware of.

After the US, Europe is considered as the second most attractive market for serving unmet patients’ needs while realizing commercial value from innovative drugs. But while Europe has one major regulatory authority via EMA, we are talking about more than 30 countries. Even if we narrow that down to only the G5 (Germany, France, UK, Spain, Italy), we are still working with five very distinct cultures, business etiquettes, and commercialization go-to market strategies. Hence the importance of promoting cultural awareness.

Taking advantage of cultural differences and promoting it can be a huge differentiator to your success.

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In our next article

we will talk about which European country to tackle first, and how to better make this decision.  The regulatory differences can be overwhelming, which is why a landscape assessment will be the next crucial step in your strategy.