Spending time with launch, commercial and medical leaders recently, including many at the Pharmaceutical Launch Excellence (PHLEX) Summit, reinforced something I’ve been seeing in our work for a while:
Around 80% of launches stay on whatever path they fall into during that early window, and sophisticated interventions struggle to create meaningful change once six months pass. Across conversations with senior leaders from companies such as AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Bayer, Takeda, Merck, CSL Behring, BMS and UCB, people shared very similar experiences.
So we have to reframe the entire launch process. That means focusing on early momentum and rapid signal detection, instead of the classic “rocket launch” mindset, and move towards a more fluid, adaptive model.
Launch excellence depends on human behaviour
It's easy to get lost in the many frameworks, tools, dashboards, and checklists, but launches are won and lost through human behaviour. The real challenges in launches are rarely technical, but stem from misalignment between functions, gaps in psychological safety, lack of shared purpose, unclear roles and decision-rights, slow cross-functional communication, and an imbalance of power between global and local teams.
Early evidence, system value and patient impact
Leaders I've heard from stressed that if teams start asking “How do we translate clinical data into system value?” at the time of launch, they are too late.
Evidence needs to be shaped earlier and anchored in what truly matters to health systems, such as patient outcomes beyond clinical endpoints, care gaps and inefficiencies, absenteeism, presenteeism, productivity, equity and access, and the behaviours that drive real adoption.
Global–local empowerment and accountability
Local teams understand their health systems best and need the freedom to adjust forecasts, assumptions, and tactics. At the same time as that it's really important to ensure there's clear accountability for performance and clarity on what is fixed versus what can be adapted.
How can you best tackle the operational requirements for launch excellence?
Areas of focus should be: improving forecasting, scenario planning, continuously reassessing assumptions, optimising investment, and linking forecasts to lifecycle management.
In the face of overlapping portfolios and constrained resources, organisations are starting to step away from brand-by-brand planning and instead think at the disease-area and portfolio level.
And consider exploring the operational side of launch for complex therapies, as supply reliability can be a differentiator in markets where demand and supply are imbalanced.
The use of AI is beginning to be a fundamental shift that will reshape launches: this is a future where regulatory AI accelerates approvals, clinical algorithms shape prescribing, and evidence must become machine-readable and continuously updated.
We offer practical support through targeted workshops, launch readiness approaches and simple tools that help teams learn early, learn fast and build momentum in that critical first six months. If you would like to stress-test an upcoming launch, or explore how to strengthen the first six months for a portfolio or disease area, we’d love to talk to you!