In pharma, celebrating the thrill of a new product launch comes naturally. What’s harder, and often overlooked, is managing the portfolio that quietly sustains the business long after the fanfare fades.
Throughout my career, I’ve seen this imbalance play out repeatedly: global strategies prioritise innovation, while local teams are left to maintain the performance of mature brands with limited guidance or investment. These legacy assets may no longer be the star of the show, but they remain critical, driving profitability, supporting infrastructure, and continuing to serve patients every day.
When the organisational spotlight tilts too far towards the next big thing, the link between breakthrough growth and legacy value begins to fray. This tension can lead to conflicting priorities, fragmented planning, and missed opportunities.
Six practical shifts that make a difference
Too often, the disconnect between global strategy and local execution is acknowledged, but not actively addressed. Good intentions aren’t enough. Bridging this gap means rethinking how we think, plan, and operate across the lifecycle.
1 – Prevent misalignment from taking root
Strategic misalignment rarely arrives with a warning. It emerges quietly: through inconsistent execution, rushed compromises, or slipping targets. In many cases, the root causes are structural and systemic:
- Strategic priorities between global and local teams are often misaligned due to limited oversight, communication, and coordination
- The long-term value of lifecycle management is undervalued, leading to underinvestment in mature brands
- Short-term business pressures divert focus from sustainable lifecycle management strategies
Naming these challenges openly – and treating them as organisational issues instead of interpersonal ones – is the first step towards fixing them.
2 – Use shared criteria to guide portfolio choices
One of the most effective tools I’ve seen is a transparent, data-driven decision-making framework that helps global and local teams evaluate and quantify trade-offs together. The aim isn’t to add complexity, but to support smarter, faster prioritisation:
- Local teams need a structured way to frame the case for legacy brand investment
- Global teams need objective inputs to confidently weigh competing priorities
A shared framework moves conversations from friction to collaboration, and from politics to performance.
3 – Update lifecycle management for today’s needs
Linking to point two, mature brands don’t require less attention, just a different kind of attention. When lifecycle management is treated as a strategic discipline, it drives sustained value. This means:
- Aligning customer engagement and channel resources to brand relevance and lifecycle stage
- Revisiting pricing and access strategies to improve portfolio-level P&L performance
- Using data to identify overlaps in prescribing habits, price sensitivity, and HCP engagement
- Scaling investment based on future market opportunity rather than past performance
This portfolio mindset helps organisations stay agile and focused on what still delivers value, especially when budgets are tight!
4 – Involve local insight early in lifecycle planning – not as a formality
I’ve seen local input brought in too late, after global plans are already locked in. The most successful strategies I’ve been part of have embedded local voices into global thinking from the outset. This leads to:
- Target Product Profiles that reflect real-world needs, aligning global ambition with practical execution
- Active roles for local leaders in global lifecycle teams, through rotational opportunities or cross-functional structures, building shared ownership and mutual accountability
These aren’t token gestures. They reduce rework, increase capability building, enable better decisions, and support relevance across diverse markets.
5 – Empower local teams to lead on resource allocation
Expanding on point 4, this means intentionally enabling local teams to equip themselves to make trade-offs wisely, while staying aligned to broader goals:
- Local teams should be able to propose tiered investment plans that reflect lifecycle stage, brand value, and market potential
- Global teams can set guardrails, but should encourage markets to model and present LCM scenarios for review
- P&L-controlled autonomy fosters confidence, accountability, and speed of execution
The closer decision-making is to the customer and the data, the stronger the results.
6 – Measure what really matters – across the portfolio
As the saying goes, what gets measured gets managed. Legacy brands frequently remain underrepresented in KPIs and incentive systems designed to drive strategic outcome:
- KPIs should evolve with the lifecycle stage of each asset; not all brands need the same metrics
- Incentives should reward both launch excellence and sustained performance
- Teams should be encouraged to balance innovation and optimisation, integrating the two as complementary priorities
When performance measurement reflects the full commercial reality, lifecycle management becomes part of the core business.
Building coherence without compromise
There’s no single blueprint for closing the divide between launch-driven strategies and the sustained management of mature brands, but there is a better balance to be struck: a balance that honours innovation while also recognising the enduring contribution of established brands.
In my experience, when we listen across functions, ask better questions, and bring more structure to our thinking, alignment gets easier, and outcomes improve.
Mature brands don’t need to compete with new launches for attention. But they do deserve thoughtful planning, deliberate support, and a seat at the strategic table. When that happens, the full portfolio becomes stronger, more resilient – and more influential.
If your team is grappling with similar challenges, let’s connect. I’d welcome the chance to exchange ideas.