Category Archives: Globalização
A comoditização da Biotec
Com o fim do período de cobertura das patentes e muitos princípios activos a passar para o domínio público a era dos genéricos está a redefinir a industria farmacéutica que assiste à comoditização dos seus produtos tradicionalmente identificados como de elevado valor acrescentado. E como forma de contrariar este estado de coisas começa a destruir o valor da indústria biotecnológica com a criação dos biossimilares. Não sei se estão familiarizados com o conceito mas há farmacéuticas como a Pfizer e a Sandoz que estão a apostar fortemente neste tipo de fármacos. Fico o artigo abaixo para quem possa ter interesse neste assunto.
Attack of the biosimilars
Biotechnology drugs are the next target for cheaper versions
Oct 21st 2010 | New york | from Economist
GENERIC drugs are the scourge of the pharmaceutical industry. So it is ironic that the next great opportunity for traditional drugs firms is to do to the biotechnology interlopers exactly what the generics firms have done to them: shred their profit margins with cheaper copies.
This battle is foreshadowed in a deal announced on October 18th by Pfizer, the world’s biggest pharmaceutical firm. It will work with Biocon, India’s largest biotech company, to bring “biosimilar” insulin treatments to market. Biosimilars are generic impersonations (although not identical copies) of biotech drugs. And as if to remind the world that new ideas don’t all come from America, it is the Indian firm that will design and manufacture the original drugs; Pfizer will only market them.
This is part of a new strategy to become a “one-stop shop” for biosimilars, explains David Simmons of Pfizer. Biosimilars are a hot new area. Although biotech-based drugs account for only a fifth or so of global drugs sales they are projected to grow at double-digit rates as sales of many conventional drugs decline, especially with a large number of patent expirations coming. Add the fact that many biotech drugs produce enormous profits—some treatments cost $100,000 or more per year—and it is easy to see why the sector looks like a juicy target for generic assault.
Yet some traditional generics firms are piling in too. Sales of biosimilars at Sandoz, a generics arm of Novartis, a Swiss drugs giant, reached $118m in 2009. Jeff George, Sandoz’s boss, says they leapt 72% during the first half of 2010. William Marth of Israel’s Teva, the world’s biggest generics firm, insists that biosimilars are a “natural segue” for his company and predicts that sales will reach $800m by 2015. Cipla, an Indian generics maker, and China’s Desano Pharma are also getting into the biosimilars business.
Generics firms will do better with biosimilars than they have with conventional generic drugs, insists Viren Mehta, an industry expert. Sandoz’s Mr George says the leading generics firms have access to better technologies now and have made doctors and patients comfortable with using copies of drugs. However, he acknowledges one potential snag: complexity.
The science involved in making biosimilars is much more complicated than that in making ordinary generics, says Andrew Pasternak of Bain & Company, a consultancy. A typical generic drug may cost a few million dollars to develop, he estimates, but a biosimilar version could cost perhaps $100m-150m. And because biosimilars are not exact copies, many countries may not allow them to be automatically substituted for the pricier originals, as generic drugs often are in some countries.
This complexity hands the advantage to the old pharmaceutical giants. Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, head of Biocon, says the “easy substitution” that generics firms enjoy at the pharmacy does not work with complex biosimilars—which require a doctor’s approval to dispense.
The big drugs companies will benefit from that because they have marketing machines and large technical sales forces to persuade doctors to prescribe a drug. Michael Kamarck of Merck, an American drugs firm which moved into biosimilars in 2008, thinks the barriers to entry are so great that “only a handful” of firms will be able to pull it off.
Yet the outcome may not be so simple. As the Pfizer deal with Biocon suggests, both sides may need partners. That is because there is an obstacle to biosimilars even more formidable than cost: lawsuits. Biosimilars threaten incumbent biotech firms such as Amgen and Genentech (now part of Roche, a Swiss drugs giant), which have billions of dollars of sales at risk, argues Mr Pasternak. Big biotech will fight hard to defend its patch, he predicts.”
Why can’t ****** magically fix the economy?
Li isto na Fortune mas apareceu também no Washington Post de onde copiei esta parte do artigo. Substituam as estrelinhas pela capital ou o nome do governante que quiserem e leiam a resposta abaixo. É mesmo importante e nestes dias em que campeia a demagogia e a desinformação, tomar consciencia do quanto os responsáveis políticos eou económicos são impotentes para resolver a situação em que nos colocamos, aqui como lá… Leiam… Releiam… E apliquem à realidade nacional e internacional… Saber que não há varinhas mágicas não ajuda por si a sair da crise, mas não ter ilusões ajuda…
Fortune
Sunday, October 17, 2010; 2:32 AM
Let us tell you an Ugly Truth about the economy, a truth that no one in power or who aspires to power wants to share with you, at least until after the midterm elections are over. It’s this: There is nothing that the U.S. government or the Federal Reserve or tax cutters can do to make our economic pain vanish overnight. There are no all-powerful, all-knowing superheroes or supervillains who can rescue or tank the economy all by themselves.
From listening to what passes for public debate in our country, you’d never know that. You’d think that the federal government could revive the economy quickly if only Congress would let it be more aggressive with stimulus spending. Or that the Fed could fix it if only it weren’t overly worried about touching off inflation. Or that the free market could fix it if only we made deep and permanent tax cuts.
Watch enough cable TV, listen to enough talk radio, read enough blogs and columns, and you’d think that they – the bad guys – are forcing the country to suffer needlessly when a simple and painless solution to our problems is at hand. But if you look at things rationally rather than politically, you’ll see that Washington has far less power over the economy, and far less maneuvering room, than people think.
“It’s endemic in our type of society that we always think there’s a person who holds the magic wand,” says Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), a fiscal conservative who isn’t running for reelection, so he can, well, be blunt. “But this society and this economy are far too complex to be susceptible to magic wands.””
Innovation in Asia
Mais um da Economist
Innovation in Asia
Trading places
China is about to overtake Japan in patent applications
Sep 30th 2010 | TOKYO
ONLY five years ago, most of the expensive bits and pieces inside a typical Apple iPod came from Japan. Today an autopsy of the iPad reveals that nearly all the important components come from South Korea and Taiwan. In such a short time Japan’s dominance of Asia’s technology industry has been eroded by its neighbours.
Between 2006 and 2009, the number of patent applications in America, Europe and South Korea largely held steady. But filings in Japan sank while those in China soared. If the pattern holds, more patents may be filed in China this year than in Japan for the first time, putting China in striking distance of America. It is an astonishing reversal. As recently as 2000, Japanese patent filings were four times greater than China’s. (…)
The economic crisis caused many firms to cut R&D spending. In 2008-09 many Japanese companies, including Sony, Sharp, Toyota and Toshiba, slashed their research budgets by 10-20%. However, Chinese firms such as Huawei and ZTE, which both make telecoms equipment, increased their R&D spending by 30-50%. China’s domestic research-spending is now poised to surpass Japan’s in purchasing-power terms.
An example of Japan’s R&D lethargy is Hitachi, its third-largest company with some $100 billion in sales. Hitachi habitually invests 4% of sales in R&D, explains its boss, Hiroaki Nakanishi. Yet this budgetary straitjacket is oblivious to market demands and it risks missing opportunities. Nevertheless, Mr Nakanishi says that he is satisfied with the approach. By comparison, Samsung, South Korea’s biggest conglomerate, plans to spend almost twice as much on research in absolute terms this year. Last year Samsung’s profits exceeded those of all nine of Japan’s big electronics firms combined.(…)
Japan still has the largest number of patents in force, at 1.9m in 2008, compared with 1.4m for America and a mere 134,000 for China. However, the countries where the greatest number of foreign patents are legally based are Barbados, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein and Ireland, notes the OECD. These patents mostly belong to Western firms seeking to reduce the tax they pay on licensing revenue. It is one innovation that OECD governments would like to make obsolete.”
Micronutrientes
Ao contrário do que podem fazer crer os meus posts anteriores a água, mesmo com todas as suas implicações, está longe de ser o único problema com que o mundo se debate. A questão dos micronutrientes, e a forma como a saúde de populações mais carenciadas poderia ser melhorada através da sua administração, é uma questão que tem recebido cada vez mais atenção de múltiplas organizações.
“Micronutrients are simply vitamins and minerals like iron, folic acid, vitamin A, vitamin D, zinc, and so forth that we’re all familiar with and take for granted. They’re essential to a person’s health and wellbeing, yet 30% of the world’s population suffers from significant micronutrient deficiencies – that’s two billion people!”
“In an examination of economic solutions to ten of the world´s biggest challenges, the 2008 Copenhagen Consensus concluded that combating malnutrition in undernourished children, specifically providing vitamin A and zinc, provides the most beneficial return on investment. Every dollar spent creates benefits worth $17.”
Uma das organizações activas neste domínio é a Micronutient Initiative “The Micronutrient Initiative (MI) is dedicated to ensuring that the world’s most vulnerable-especially women and children in developing countries-get the vitamins and minerals they need to survive and thrive.”
Uma outra é o Project Healthy Children “Saving Lives Through Sustainable and Measurable Methods of Food Fortification. Project Healthy Children works with governments and private industry to establish food fortification programs that improve the health of women and children around the world – every time they eat a meal.” Este é particularmente interessante nos projectos de aditivação em pequena escala. Vejam também os projectos em colaboração com Stanford neste domínio.
Hippo Roller
Há produtos que mesmo não sendo recentes merecem a nossa atenção pelo que nos podem ensinar. No ano passado a experimenta design tinha uma secção de design da África do Sul onde descobri coisas muito interessantes. Entre elas este Hippo Roller que me interpelou e fez questionar a abordagem a DPQ. O produto é extremamente interessante no seu objectivo, na solução que apresenta para o problema, na forma como refaz o carrinho de mão… Enfim, poderiamos passar horas a dicutir as virtudes deste produto. Vejam o video, o site e reflitam um bocadinho sobre as virtudes do produto e de como o desenvolvimento de novos produtos pode servir para outras coisas que não seja simplesmente alimentar a sociedade da insaciedade (vulgarmente conhecida por sociedade de consumo)…
“For most of us water is available within a short distance, but for many, access to water requires many hours of waiting in queues and then carrying heavy loads of water all the way home.
The time and energy spent attending to this basic human right, of access to water, limits their educational and economic opportunities.
More than a billion people worldwide do not enjoy the luxury of water on tap in or near their homes.
Traditional methods of collecting water include carrying heavy 20 litre buckets on the head.
Over time these heavy loads place an enormous strain on the skeletal frame, causing long-term damage and premature ageing.
Hippo water Roller is a tool designed to help women and children to transport more water more easily than traditional methods.
► empowers women and children
► saves time and energy
► reduces suffering”
Local
Uma das mais fortes tendências de consumo que identifiquei nos dias que passei na Cornualha foi o interesse pelos produtos locais. Mencionei já os gelados a que poderia juntar mais umas quantas marcas, mas os menus dos restaurantes mencionavam sempre que utilizavam produtos locais, e havia um enorme esforço por promover e comercializar os produtos da região. Não me podia deixar indiferente a publicidade de uma cerveja cujo crédito era a cevada ser 100% británica… E não me parece que este interesse pelo “local” tenha aparecido com a crise…
Numa região fortemente turística parece ser uma tendência interessante num mundo cada vez mais globalizado e descaracterizado… Quando se sentam num restaurante no Alentejo, nas Beiras ou em Trás-os-Montes faria ou não diferença saber que os produtos utilizados na confecção da refeição foram produzidos em quintas da região e não algures numa estufa na Espanha?… Voltarei a este tópico…
Fiquem entretanto com a “The Cornish Crisp Co”
“The Cornish Crisp Company uses local hands, produce and skills to make fine potato crisps.”
Conhecem o Starbucks? E o Peet’s?…
Se calhar do Peet’s nunca ouviram falar… Mas é um personagem curioso que está de alguma forma na génese do Starbucks e uma lição de como a qualidade e uma boa ideia não nos levam muito longe se não forem apoiadas por um bom esforço de gestão e uma vontade de conquistar o mundo. Peet’s tinha quase todos os ingredientes para ter sido um sucesso planetário… Confesso que também não conhecia a história mas contaram-ma ao passar por este quiosque… Fica como reflexão sobre as limitações da inovação…
Galão
Inovar é frequentemente apenas um novo olhar sobre as coisas familiares… E se não somos capazes de o fazer e valorizar o que é nosso é pelo menos bom sentir que outros os fazem… Fui surpreendido com esta no aeroporto de Frankfurt… (Os distraidos notem o final da primeira coluna…) Deixo reflexões mais aprofundadas para vocês… É no entanto interessante notar que a contribuição portuguesa para a… como lhe chamaremos? cultura gastronómica internacional em torno do café? foi o Galão…
Dos jornais
No “i” de ontem a revista sobre nostálgicos e a nostalgia…
Nos jornais desta semana a notícia da Super Bock a aproveitar os contentores vazios que regressam à China para exportar cerveja… A globalização é um jogo que pode ser jogado para ambos os lados… Traz ameaças mas também oportunidades para quem as souber aproveitar… Feliz de quem como a UNICER é capaz de o perceber…