Leading Organizational Learning

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The Audacity of Imagination

How Lilly Is Creating

“Research Without Walls”

Sharon Sullivan

Bryan Dunnivant

Laurie Sachtleben

“Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of
imagination.”^1 “None of us is as smart as all of us.”^2
Few enterprises are more complex, more costly, or more failure-
prone than pharmaceutical research and development. From labo-
ratory to launch, it takes between 10 and 15 years and up to $800
million to develop a single new medicine. The odds that an intrigu-
ing molecular compound will become the next blockbuster are,
roughly, 1 in 5,000. By comparison, bringing a new automobile or
computer chip to market is a snap.
Pharmaceutical companies also have a need for speed. The old
expression, “The patient is waiting,” has real and poignant mean-
ing for the scientists searching for tomorrow’s cures. Furthermore,
pharmaceutical companies must keep their pipelines full to survive
the inevitable loss of patent protection for top-selling products.
It is small wonder, then, that businesses like Eli Lilly and Com-
pany are reaching far beyond their own walls to turbo-charge their
research and development (R&D) engines and mitigate the risk
and cost of innovation.

309