Senior Director, New Product Strategy & Innovation

About Ipsen:

Ipsen is a mid-sized global biopharmaceutical company with a focus on transformative medicines in three therapeutic areas: Oncology, Rare Disease and Neuroscience. Supported by nearly 100 years of development experience, with global hubs in the U.S., France and the U.K, we tackle areas of high unmet medical need through research and innovation.

 Our passionate teams in more than 40 countries are focused on what matters and endeavor every day to bring medicines to patients in 88 countries. We build a workplace that champions human-centric leadership and fosters a culture of collaboration, excellence and impact. At Ipsen, every individual is empowered to be their true selves, grow and thrive alongside the company’s success. Join us on our journey towards sustainable growth, creating real impact on patients and society!

For more information, visit us at https://www.ipsen.com/ and follow our latest news on LinkedIn and Instagram.

At Ipsen, our vision is to be a leading global mid-size biopharmaceutical company, with a focus on transformative medicines in three key therapeutic areas: oncology, rare disease, and neuroscience.

A key strategic focus for us to meet this objective is the creation of a balanced and sustainable pipeline that drives commercial success through delivering value to patients’ lives.

The New Product Strategy & Innovation Team is responsible for leading the end-to-end process of setting the therapeutic area strategies, bringing in external assets with our global partnering colleagues, and establishing and implementing early commercialization and pre-launch plans to maximize asset value.

In the last 2-years we have brought in over 20 new assets into our pipeline, and looking forward we will continue to grow and advance this pipeline while launching products across therapeutic areas. As such, the New Product Strategy & Innovation team is expanding its capacity, capabilities, and responsibilities to ensure that we meet the overall objectives and vision of Ipsen’s growing portfolio for patients.

To support this vision, the Senior Director, New Product Strategy & Innovation role will directly contribute to:

• Evolution of the Therapeutic Area & Franchise Strategies

• Commercial leadership of external asset evaluations in strong collaboration with the Global Partnering & External Innovation Team

• Commercial leadership of all internal pipeline assets including early commercial phase 1-2 assets and pre-launch Ph 3 assets until transition to the in-line asset lead and brand team

Support External Innovation / New Product / Portfolio Strategy:

• Lead and update the therapeutic area strategies to drive focus of business development and pipeline advancement activities

• Work with cross-functional colleagues and affiliates as appropriate to enable relevant market knowledge and unmet needs to inform strategy formulation

• Present recommendations to executive leadership

• Consistently apply the therapeutic area strategies to business development and pipeline advancement decision-making

Find & Evaluate New External / Business Development Opportunities:

• Represent the commercial team and leadership in all business development and external innovation activities
• Be the commercial lead across all stages of the business development & external innovation process including sourcing, triage, business case development, due diligence, and asset/company internalization
• Establish a strong external expert network in current and target disease areas to understand new asset potential and unmet needs
• Lead in-depth commercial evaluation process (e.g., current & future landscaping, secondary and primary market research, forecasting, pricing & access assessment, SMM estimation, etc.) to inform commercial evaluation and diligence
• Be a proactive partner and work collaboratively with cross-functional teams (e.g., business development, external innovation, medical affairs, R&D, regulatory, finance, countries, global pricing & access, business excellence) to support inputs required for commercial modelling & business case development
• Ensure streamlined, efficient, and quality content generation across all evaluations aligning with internal processes
• Own & present New Product Strategy & Innovation recommendations to cross-functional team and executive leadership teams
• Identify and implement opportunities to enhance the business development commercial assessment process
• Work closely with other counterparts across franchises to share best practices and business opportunities

Driving Internal Pipeline Value & Operationalization

• Commercial lead for integration of new assets across phases 1 – 3 into Ipsen pipeline
• Apply deal case assumptions to inform initial clinical trial development programs
• Proactively identify opportunities for clinical development program enhancement through application of substantive product development experience, including translation of commercial objectives into trial design considerations in collaboration with cross-functional colleagues
• Rigorously evaluate alternative development pathways and provide commercial input into optimal development priorities including selected indications, trial design, and trial endpoints in collaboration with R&D colleagues
• Apply best-in-class launch planning considerations to earlier phase development, including consideration of global value and access and other commercialization critical success factors
• Clearly characterize commercial vision for the asset at all phases of development and lead strategy and pre-launch plan transition to asset lead
• Generally serve as the ‘brand champion’ for early assets to ensure organizational focus and alignment
• Provide guidance and best practices to the New Product Strategy & Innovation team regarding optimization of commercial input into early pipeline development

Continued focus on New Product Strategy & Innovation Team Development & Performance

• Support the VP, Global Head New Products Strategy & Innovation to identify and deploy relevant training, development and coaching of the team to maximize team growth, performance, and organizational impact
  • Including bi-monthly learning sessions, mentoring, external talent evaluation, on-boarding, template/tools and best-practices development

Education / Certifications:

• Advanced degree (PhD, MD, or MS) in Life Sciences-related discipline and/or an MBA
• Fluency in spoken and written English, knowledge of additional languages such as French would be helpful.

Experience:

• A minimum of 7 - 10 years’ in life sciences strategic commercial roles or life sciences strategy consulting experience (including work in early-commercial strategy, commercialization, LCM, BD, due diligence, etc.)
• Substantial experience in Global Marketing or Global Portfolio Management roles within the biopharmaceutical industry, including experience in early commercial planning, disease area strategy, business development activity, and forecasting is highly valued
• Experience leading multiple product and company valuation projects with cross-functional partners
• Experience developing cross-functional pre-commercialization plans within pharmaceutical company or management consulting
• Experience in working across a cross-functional matrix team to meet deliverables on time and budget
• Strong scientific, medical, and commercial experience in oncology, neuroscience and/or rare diseases with a proven knowledge of clinical pipeline planning, business development, and launch activities
• Competitive landscaping experience