Director, New Products Strategy and Innovation

About the Role

To support New Products & Franchise Leadership in Oncology, Rare Diseases, and Neurosciences across:

• Therapeutic Area & Franchise Strategy Evolution
• Commercial evaluations of new global business opportunities
• Business Development / External Innovation
• Internal Pipeline Commercial Planning

At Ipsen, our vision is to be a leading global mid-size biopharmaceutical company, with a focus on transformative medicines in three key therapeutic areas: oncology, rare disease, and neuroscience. A key strategic focus for us in meeting this objective is business development & partnering. In the last three years, we brought in over 20 new assets into our portfolio across various stages of development and across our three key therapeutic areas through licensing, partnering, and collaborations. In 2024 and beyond, we plan to continue our strategic focus and execution in creating a balanced & sustainable pipeline across therapeutic areas.

Responsibilities

New Products & External Innovation Strategy Support

• Support New Products Head and work collaboratively with cross-functional teams leading strategy processes (e.g., business development, external innovation, franchise, R&D, strategy & transformation).
• Conduct analysis across key areas to support the continuous evolution and update of the therapeutic area strategy (e.g., landscaping assessments, benchmarking, analogue analysis) and develop story/slide generation of strategic outputs as they evolve.
• Work with internal Asset Teams as appropriate to capture relevant insights to support external innovation strategy.

Business Development & External Innovation: Commercial Evaluations

• Be the commercial lead across all stages of the business development & external innovation process: screening, triage/deep-dive, and due diligence.
• Sourcing & Screening: Work in collaboration with external innovation teams in sourcing new assets across oncology and rare diseases based on our strategy.
• Asset Triaging:
  • Lead the commercial triage of new business development opportunities, including disease assessment, competitive landscaping, market sizing, and risk & opportunity assessment.
  • Represent Franchise on company calls with potential partners.
• Due Diligence: Lead the commercial evaluation of assets in due diligence.
• Conduct in-depth commercial evaluation and be the lead content generator (e.g., current & future landscaping, secondary and primary market research, forecasting, pricing & access assessment, SMM estimation, etc.).
• Be a proactive partner and work collaboratively with cross-functional teams (e.g., business development, external innovation, medical affairs, R&D, regulatory, finance, countries, global pricing & access, business excellence) to support inputs required for commercial modeling such as launch dates, LOE, duration of treatment, LCM indications, etc.
• Ensure streamlined, efficient, and quality content generation across all evaluations aligning with internal processes.
• Synthesize findings & present recommendations to cross-functional teams and leadership teams.

Internal Pipeline: Early Commercial Planning

• Lead early commercial planning process for internal pipeline products across oncology and rare diseases, including:
  • Indication prioritization, portfolio strategy, LCM planning, business case development.
• Facilitate analysis required to support commercialization and/or continued development for new products.
• Support the cross-functional team & local country teams in pre-launch activities, playing a pivotal role in the transition of these activities to a fully dedicated Global Brand Team as the asset moves through the lifecycle. Key deliverables include:
  • Brand strategy & launch plan, launch readiness review, campaign & core messaging, global launch sequence, LCM indications prioritization, etc.
• Work collaboratively with R&D and other critical functions within the Global Asset Team to ensure efficient execution with a long-term commercial vision.

Requirements

Education / Certifications

• Advanced degree (PhD, MD, or MS) in Life Sciences-related discipline and/or an MBA.
• Fluency in spoken and written English; knowledge of additional languages such as French would be helpful.

Experience

• A minimum of:
  • 3 - 5 years’ experience in early commercial or BD roles within a pharmaceutical or biopharmaceutical industry at a global level, or
  • 3 – 5 years of Strategy Consulting experience in life sciences (including work in early-commercial strategy, commercialization, LCM, BD, due diligence, etc.).
• Experience in early commercial planning, launch planning, and disease area strategy either as part of a pharmaceutical/biopharma or a consultancy company.
• Experience in working across a cross-functional matrix team to meet deliverables on time and budget.
• Strong scientific, medical, and commercial experience in oncology and rare diseases with a proven knowledge of business development and launch activities.
• Strong communication and presentation skills.
• Demonstrated exceptional strategic thinking.

Key Technical Competencies

• Sense of urgency and experience in delivering parallel workstreams efficiently.
• Deep strategic marketing expertise (disease areas in oncology, rare disease & neuroscience, positioning, targeting, segmentation, life cycle management).
• Strong business acumen and understanding of global markets.
• Excellent analytical skills and strategic thinking.
• Competitive landscaping.
• Conducting qualitative & quantitative market research.
• Strong planning and project management skills.
• Excellent business case modeling and presentation skills (Excel & PowerPoint use).