As a Pharma strategy consultancy, we get client requests to do competitive war games at least 2-3 times per year.   In case you are not aware, competitive war games are facilitated events where cross-functional teams are asked to “step into the shoes” of their competitors in order to gain a deeper level of insight into the competitor’s thinking. The output of this exercise would lead to tactics used to limit any competitive gains or in common parlance – blunt the competition. These competitive war games requests usually happen when there is a perceived competitive threat and being on anything but high alert is not an option.

There is an underlying premise to competitive war games the way they are typically structured which is: If we are able to think like them, we’ll know what they are going to do, sometimes before they do it, and therefore we can do something pre-emptive. But the question is: How do you think like someone you’re not? In reality, you are more likely to project your own way of thinking onto your competitor under the illusion that you can know exactly how they think and what they’ll do by role-playing them. In this way, your pre-emptive tactics are more likely to “blunt” what you would have done yourself.
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This isn’t to say that a deep understanding of your competition is wasted energy – it isn’t. When we work with clients, we help ensure that the focus of their strategy is developing an offer for their market that is too good to refuse. Their effort is centered on continually tightening the match between their offer (e.g. efficacy, safety, tolerability, cost, etc.) and the needs and motivations of their market (e.g. HCPs, Payers, Patients, etc). And because the goal of strategy is to have a tighter match than your competitors, it’s vitally important to know where your offering stands relative to theirs. But where you really want deep understanding is in getting at the needs and motivations of your customers – what their decision factors are, why they prescribe or don’t prescribe your product. This knowledge coupled with a great offering is where real competitive advantage lies and it’s not just an event but an ongoing part of the everyday job.

Over the years, we at Sixsense Strategy Group have worked across a wide range of therapeutic areas, developing business and medical strategies for our pharmaceutical and biotech clients, interacting both with cross functional pharmaceutical and healthcare professionals (HCPs).

Insight generation requires us to read scientific literature to gain an understanding of the disease area we are working with, including how the disease or condition is diagnosed, treated and managed. Speaking with HCPs we have learned that often what is published in scientific literature does not mirror clinical practice. In fact, not only have we observed differences between scientific literature and clinical practice, but also differences between regions and countries.

It is important to note that although scientific literature can provide guidance and recommendations for disease diagnosis, treatment and management, one must look beyond this. Each patient case is unique, often requiring a tailored approach influenced by several factors such as disease severity and whether underlying etiology is present. Consequently, many HCPs adopt an evidence-based medicine approach to their practice, integrating clinical experience and patient values with the best available published research.

Gaining insights as to how HCPs approach clinical practice cannot be undervalued, as this is integral for understanding a therapeutic area.   For pharmaceutical companies it can inform how they speak with HCPs as well as how they develop clinically meaningful endpoints for trials.
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One vehicle for gathering valuable HCP insights include well designed and executed strategic advisory boards. In addition to providing first-hand accounts of the reality of clinical practice, strategic advisory boards also shed light on HCP motivations for prescribing and administering therapies, in turn informing how medical strategies are designed.