Blogging and Biotech: A fun and creative piece emphasizing the Value Creation potential of Social Technologies in Biotech

Imagine a young, enthusiastic scientist (I will call him Edward) sitting—Macbook in lap—on a second hand couch in a flat just outside the walls of the his University (which I will call Top Rank University). Just yesterday, and after little more than one year as a post-doctoral fellow with the Department of Pathology, Edward received his Certification of Completion of Postdoctoral Research for his innovative work on target discovery for antibody therapeutics. Now, he sits with his Macbook and evaluates several interesting pharmaceutical companies, one of which will become his first employer outside academia.

A few months ago, after entering “antibody therapeutics” into a Google search at 11pm one night, Edward found a blog discussing the production of fully human therapeutic antibodies from transgenic mice. Immediately, he noted that the blog was extremely informative, simple, elegant, the #1 return from his Google search, and maintained by an obviously social technology savvy pharmaceutical company (which I will call SocialTech Pharma). “Cool! This is exactly the company I want to work for,” thought Edward just before falling asleep.

Skip forward three years, and Edward is working at SocialTech Pharma. Just three years earlier, Edward was one of 300 scientists, representing over 40 countries and nearly every globally prestigious academic institution, who applied for the Immunobiology Scientist position at SocialTech Pharma. In just three years, he helped the company pioneer the field of Rapid Fire Drug Discovery (RFDD) by spearheading a project to create a novel automated drug discovery system called OmniPATH.

Step back two years. On his one-year anniversary at SocialTech Pharma, Edward received a call from Craig Venter, who had been following SocialTech’s blog, press releases, and progress in RFDD. This conversation between Edward and Venter initiated a sequence of events resulting in the creation of OmniPATH. Shortly after their first meeting at a coffee shop near by, they contacted numerous Biotech companies and academic institutions looking for potential collaborators. It was extraordinarily easy for Edward to find other scientists willing to partner with SocialTech Pharma, since everyone was very familiar with and trusting of SocialTech due to the company’s global presence and transparency within the global scientific community, a key result of maintaining an extremely resourceful and public company blog.

Ultimately, Edward and Venter, together with six other scientists from SocialTech collaborated with scientists from four partnering biotech companies and six academic institutions to create an automated drug discovery system, OmniIPATH. OmniPATH combines target discovery, synthetic biology, reverse immunology, and bioinformatics in order to 1) rapidly mass produce therapeutic antibodies and vaccines to practically any disease or pathogen, and 2) re-engineer any therapeutic antibody or vaccine—at a moment’s notice—in response to drug immunogenicity or evasive adaptations of a pathogen. OmniPATH rapidly carried SocialTech into global spotlight as the leader of health care innovation, and of course a champion of strategic social collaboration.

Obviously, this fantastic story is completely fictional. Yet it enacts the extraordinary benefits, or Value Creation, that can spawn from proper use of social technologies. In July 2012, McKinsey & Company, a global management consulting firm, released an extensive report investigating the current and potential impact of social technologies on the economy, with emphasis on Pharmaceutical, High Tech, Telecom, Legal, Retail, and Financial enterprises (see The social economy: Unlocking value and productivity through socialtechnologies). McKinsey’s report analyzed social technology usage across multiple enterprises representing “almost 20 percent of global industry sales” and estimated that “between $900 billion and $1.3 trillion in value can be unlocked through the use of social technology” within the examined business sectors; keeping in mind that these figures are based on ideal conditions. Moreover, McKinsey reported “two-thirds of the value creation opportunity afforded by social technologies lies in improving communications and collaboration within and across enterprises.”

Social technologies, something as simple as a company blog, if properly used and maintained, can dramatically improve communication and collaboration both within the company and between external parties, regardless of geographies and time zones, and “at virtually zero marginal cost,” according to McKinsey. A successful company blog creates a unified and powerful voice, and can serve as a cyber-conduit through which information is immediately communicated and easily accessed at a later time if needed.

The biggest and most powerful impact of a company blog is EXPOSURE. By increasing its global presence, establishing greater connections with patients and potential collaborators, and instilling trust within local and global scientific communities, a pharmaceutical company can exponentially increase its Value Creation potential over time. And with numerous methods of regulating blog usage, visibility and content, the company can feel confident knowing its property and its image are well protected.

In the fictional story presented above, Edward chose to apply for the Immunobiology Scientist position at SocialTech because in following the company’s blog—which lead him to the company website, which lead him to the job posting, which prompted him to apply—he acquired a high level of respect for and interest in the company. Since the company blog drew considerable attention to SocialTech Pharma, Edward found that many pharmaceuticals, biotechs, and academic institutions were excited to collaborate or form partnerships. Due to the well-informed and personable voice of SocialTech’s blog, most scientists Edward contacted felt as though they already knew and trusted the company, similar to how one might feel about a friend. Ultimately, by strategically socially collaborating and partnering with various organizations, SocialTech was able to develop OmniPATH, a revolutionary healthcare technology.

Of course, if anyone anywhere wishes to know more about OmniPATH, they can simply read about it on SocialTech’s blog.

Social Media and Corporate Leadership: Reviewing a McKinsey&Company Report

At the end of the 20^st century, as the Dot.com bubble burst, social media was gaining inertia and making an ever increase statement in corporate America.  By 2001, the number of America Online (AOL) users had grown steadily to nearly 34 million, blogging was well established and flourishing, Blackboard was revolutionizing student-teacher interactions, Google became a household name, and Wikipedia launched on January 15^th.  By 2003, LinkedIn positioned itself as a business-centric social network for professionals, while MySpace copied Friendster. Only one year later, a young Harvard undergraduate started thefacebook.com—now simply known as Facebook—which became the largest social network site on the worldwide web. Since then, social technologies continued to advance at extraordinary speeds, while simultaneously demonstrating an uncanny aptitude for swift and strategic re-invention upon economic pressure.

By 2009, corporate America was utilizing numerous forms of social media, such as blogs, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube in order to leverage their insurmountable power of communication.  Over the years, many businesses observed the power social media had on the public as well as their employees and found ways to incorporate these powerful tools of communication into their business model. Many have successfully harnessed the power of social media, some have failed in their attempt, while others struggle to adapt and evolve with these newer and very real forms of communication that disrupt traditional business models.

So why did some businesses succeed?  What caused other businesses to fail?  And how will businesses that are struggling in an age of corporate social media compete with All-Stars like General Electric (GE)?  Perhaps the answers to these questions exist within GE’s highly adaptive business model and its MVPs.

Since its beginning in the late 19^th century, GE has been a model for adaptive business strategies, especially regarding its famously successful jump into healthcare technologies after a long and lucrative history of manufacturing electronic appliances and supercharged turbine engines. Today, GE’s most recent adaptive business success story involves the proper and strategic use of social media.  Since 2012, GE has aggressively incorporated social media into nearly all of its business units across the globe, and the company is beginning to see big rewards.  However, a company is only as great as its leaders, which is why special attention should be paid to GE’s MVPs.

In February 2013, after a thorough survey of GE’s incorporation of social technologies across its many business units, McKinsey & Company, one of today’s leading global management consulting firms, published a report (see Six social-media skills every leader needs) describing its conclusions concerning GE’s leadership and key attributes that were paramount to their successful implementation of social media.  In summary, McKinsey discovered that GE’s MVPs demonstrate six dimensions of social media-literate leadership: Producer, Distributor, Recipient, Advisor, Architect, and Analyst.

The Producer

As a Producer of social media content, a leader must have the courage to move beyond fears instilled by older ways of communication. For instance, the old phrase “a picture is worth a thousand words” has been replaced with “a video is worth a million words.”  Video composed of authentic voices, creativity and engaging stories can cause people to shift to the edge of their seat and become more attentive.  Therefore, leaders must realize, accept and ultimately overcome the natural discomfort they experience when participating in a more raw and unedited form of communication. This will intellectually and creatively challenge leaders to discover and truly understand the art and science of participatory media. For example, GE Capital’s leader, Mark Begor, was nervous to participate in the company’s “unplugged” video messaging, an initiative of GE’s Video Central division. Begor was very uncomfortable with presenting himself and his message in an unedited format.  However, his discomfort quickly subsided as he improved his communication skills to better serve a participatory platform. According to McKinsey, “to thrive in the world of social media, leaders must have the courage to appear ‘raw’ and unpolished....[because] too much perfection is actually a barrier to collaboration and co-creation, as it disinvites participation.”

The Distributor

Leaders as Distributors support the creation of meaning from social media content by knowing where and how to most effectively reach their audience.  By making the social media network a center process, Lorraine Bolsinger, vice president and general manager of GE Aviation Systems, engaged and sustained a core group of followers and influencers with her "360 blog.” Identification of this core group of followers is one of the key skills identified among those with “Organizational Media Literacy.”  Understanding the next steps is critical as well.  How will your followers treat your message in the social media realm?  Leaders with Distribution Competence have a strategic understanding of multiple potential outcomes within the social universe, such as the possibility of content becoming viral, which can be an advantage or disadvantage depending on both the content and the audience.

The Recipient

The Recipient not only gathers and manages potential incoming content, but these leaders also achieve success through deep understanding of their audience.  Successful Recipients maintain a discerning eye and thoughtful voice, both critical to engaging and making meaning of content through a collaborative process with their audience.  However, engaging is not always an easy task, explains Stuart Dean, CEO of GE ASEAN.  To wade through the constant onslaught of content in the social world, it is critical to proficiently apply tested content-management tools, such as HootSuite for Twitter, to streamline the content-gathering process and increase time available for rich, authentic interactions across multiple communication channels.

The Advisor

The social media-savvy leader also functions as an Advisor, where he or she proactively tutors, guides, and strategically coordinates the social media activities of his or her team. This could mean creating new roles, such as content monitors, social network analysts, and community mentors, in order to utilize new social technologies in a strategically aligned effort.  For example, GE’s mining business came to fruition due to Steve Sargent’s, president and CEO of GE Australia and New Zealand, strategic implementation of an internal mining-industry social media network that crossed businesses and regions.  “The type of leadership we need finds its full expression in the DNA of collaborative technologies, and I am determined to leverage this DNA as much as I can,” said Sargent in a report by McKinsey and Company (ref).

The Architect

GE’s leaders are also Architects of social media, whereby they design an organizational architecture that balances free exchange of communication with enforced bylaws that circumvent or minimize irresponsible activity.  In other words, to function as an architect the leader must find a way to harmoniously intertwine vertical accountability with horizontal collaboration. Andrew Way’s, vice president of GE’s Oil, Gas Drilling and Surface Division, approach as an architect was to produce a series of videos explaining the business’s history, current state and successes. Way believes the videos united his team members by clearly and continuously communicating their shared goals. “It clearly has created a new culture,” stated Way in the 2013 McKinsey report.

The Analyst

As a social media Analyst, leaders should a) keep up with social trends and innovations while b) continuously surveying their business for gaps or weaknesses, and c) experiment with and incorporate new technologies if needed.  In 2011, GE took the lead in being an analyst when it launched its educational program called Leadership Exploration as part of the curriculum at Crotonville, GE’s leadership university.  In this program, leaders are introduced to a broad range of state-of-the-art technologies as well as innovative practices, whereby enabling GE leaders to respond quickly to change and effectively adapt if necessary.

From this in depth analysis of GE, it is clear that social media is no longer a new business model. Thousands of companies and organization have adopted social media.  For instance, at the last American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS) conference, the AAPS used Twitter to “tweet” comments between FDA and attending scientists to members who were unable to attend the meetings. “This in turn allowed them [AAPS members not present] to comment back using the same social media device,” according to Val Barra, Senior Manager of KKC’s Clinical Assay Division, who attended this year’s AAPS conference.  Val also noted that “summaries of discussion groups held after the open meeting with FDA were also expressed via Twitter. This allowed for interaction that would not otherwise have happened.”

Val’s observations provide clear evidence that social media tools are being adopted by key members of the scientific community. Of course, the FDA also demonstrates a responsible outlook on social media, especially within the realm of FDA-regulated firms (see the recently drafted Promotional Media Guidelines for Regulatory Requirements). But that is another story.

So if the FDA views social media as kosher, given that firms communicate responsibly, why are some pharmaceutical and biotech companies reluctant to change?  What can be said about companies that question the use of social media?  Moreover, companies may notice that when viewed through a sharper lens, social media can function as a “heart monitor,” constantly checking the vital signs of the company?  That being said, how can companies become more aware of the benefits of social media?

In Val’s opinion, along with the GE leaders previously mentioned, companies should embrace social media.  Val states that “Seeing these applications as potential problems rather than new ways of communication will only put the company behind those that adopt social media as an acceptable way to hold quick discussions…to ignore them is not going to benefit the company. You are better off to let Pandora out of her box for awhile and see what works and does not work, then to keep the poor girl in her box forever.”

I’m of a similar opinion as Val.  I believe in responsible and strategic open communication, and social media seems to be a natural next step in our evolution as well as the evolution of the organizational entities we create.  Therefore, it seems inevitable that social media will find its way into each and every company, eventually.  The real question is what will happen to those companies that are late to adopt social media as a standard way of communicating their business?