- With 49 billion in revenues in 2015,
and over 97,000 employees, Pfizer is
among the world's largest pharmaceutical companies,
and is consistently near the top of the Fortune 500.
Within the corporation, Pfizer Consumer Healthcare,
or PCH, develops, manufactures,
and markets leading non-prescription medicines,
vitamins, and nutritional products,
including Advil, Centrum, Robitussin, and Emergen-C.
PCH excels at growing over-the-counter brands.
This is their core business.
Their success in playing not to lose in this area
puts them in the fortunate position of being able
to play to win in other areas well beyond
their current core business.
They understand that they need to innovate
in order to expand and future-proof
their leadership position, and they know
that innovation beyond their core business today
will help shape the new core of their business
in years to come.
With this in mind, in 2015, frog and Pfizer Consumer Health
established the Design Collaborative,
an ongoing initiative to develop new health
and wellness solutions for consumers in the areas
of improved sleep, stress management,
energy, aging, and nutrition.
The Design Collaborative is an example of Venture Design,
leveraging design methodologies for rapid,
scalable business impact through the creation
of new product ecosystems, services, and businesses.
The Collaborative embodies all
of the Venture Design principles.
The team includes members from both frog and PCH
who are tasked with making strategic,
insight-driven decisions that favor forward progress
over a rigid process.
Key members of the team are co-located,
allowing for continuous engagement,
creative intensity, and alignment.
Importantly, a set of ground rules was put in place
to provide the blended team the leeway to run and pivot
at the pace of an independent startup.
Specifically, the team was provided the right-of-way
and the right to risk from the very top
of the organizations, including the president of PCH
and the CEO of frog.
Effectively, the Collaborative is empowered
to run independently, under its own guiding principles,
the Venture Design principles.
Accordingly, the Collaborative established
its own definitions and metrics of success,
independent of those guiding development
in other areas of PCH.
The Collaborative receives on-site engagement
from key leaders.
The team is authorized to work
in an open door innovation environment,
and to leverage the network,
tapping into the entrepreneurial ecosystem,
including academic institutions, subject matter experts,
incubators and accelerators, startups and VCs,
as well as establish brands and partners.
And finally, the Collaborative is able
to explore its own commercialization models.
The team approaches its work with a bias for building.
Early prototyping and the development and testing
of experience simulations are pivotal parts of the process.
Bringing the concepts to life enables the team
to consider and test the full user journey,
during rapid, iterative research cycles
that narrow in on the target users
and surface our unmet needs.
The co-location of frog and Pfizer contributors
in dedicated spaces unifies the team
and supports its independent functioning.
Their full-time commitment to the Collaborative
ensures knowledge transfer and commitment
to the success of the endeavor and its business outcomes.
The design collaborative and the ground rules
that support its operation provide a window
into the first of our principles.
New ventures thrive when provided the freedom and agency
to continually shape their own best practices.
Simply put, we must establish these new ventures
in such a way as to grant and defend their autonomy.