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Pharma and life sciences companies face pressure to innovate beyond molecules. The shift toward digital therapeutics, patient engagement platforms, AI-driven tools, and personalised care means they must operate more like software companies than traditional manufacturers.
But large enterprises aren’t built for rapid experimentation. Venture building gives pharma a way to adopt startup speed without abandoning rigour or compliance.
It creates small, empowered teams that can build and validate new digital products quickly — while leveraging the parent company’s scientific, regulatory, and distribution strengths.
Innovation theatre looks exciting but rarely produces market-ready products. Slide decks, brainstorms, hackathons, and pilots that never scale are common symptoms.
Venture building, by contrast, is structured to deliver:
It transforms innovation from a creative exercise into an operational capability.
Pharma creates small startup-style teams inside the organisation. These teams own product discovery, design, development, and early testing.
Pharma partners with specialist venture builders who provide product talent, UX expertise, and digital strategy, while the company provides domain expertise.
Pharma collaborates with startups to build new digital products together, sharing risk and speed.
Pharma supports external startups through funding and resources, gaining insights and early rights to emerging technologies.
Each model balances speed, control, and risk differently — but all create a faster path to product.
Venture building helps pharma overcome structural challenges:
By building small, multidisciplinary teams, companies move faster and design more user-friendly solutions.
Successful pharma venture teams blend:
This cross-functional approach ensures ideas are viable, usable, feasible, and compliant.
Startups succeed because they obsess over real user problems. Venture teams must do the same.
Lo-fi interfaces, service blueprints, and clickable prototypes help de-risk assumptions.
Not theoretical “personas” — but real end-users.
A concept that can’t be approved or reimbursed is a non-starter.
Startups must understand their buyers; venture teams should too.
What studies and proof points are needed for launch, reimbursement, or adoption?
These steps prevent teams from investing years into unvalidated ideas.
Once validated, ventures move into:
Some ventures even spin out into standalone companies, allowing pharma to capture upside without absorbing the product fully into slow-moving structures.
Digital therapeutics, AI-enabled care pathways, and real-world evidence products all require a blend of design, software, and clinical excellence. Pharma companies that master venture building will shape the next decade of digital health — and build competitive advantages in patient engagement and digital IP.
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