Competitive Intelligence : Too Much or Too Little ?

Drug companies are very attuned to competitive intelligence. There’s a lot of information sloshing around out there, and you’d be wise to pay attention to it. Publications in journals are probably the least of it - by the time something written up for publication from inside a pharma company, it’s either about to be on the drugstore shelves or it never will be at all. Patents are far more essential, and if you’re going to watch anything, you should watch the patent applications in your field.

But there’s more. Meetings are a big source of disclosure, as witness the Wall Street frenzies around ASCO and the like. Talks and posters release information that won’t show up in the literature for a long time (if indeed it ever does).