Remember when the iPad came out?  People didn’t really know what it was.  As in, many thought it was a replacement for a computer.  Others thought, no, it was like a really big phone.  No one was really clear as to its uses and many continually tried to put it in categories they were familiar with. And, many thought the product would just be a passing trend and Apple would fall flat on its face.  Yet, Apple saw a unique need for this item to fill and they created a new market based on this visionary concept.  Now, it’s easy today to see that there is a huge market and...

Zoe Dunn, principal of Hale Advisors, says that Pharma companies can find better ways to communicate with nurse practitioners and physicians assistants. “These important healthcare professionals receive very little time and energy from the pharmaceutical industry, yet they are prescribers in most states and of most medication, and more often than not, spend much more time with patients than doctors,” says Dunn. “They need patient education materials, updates on research and insights, and a voice in achieving better health outcomes. We need to hear from them as well. Pharma needs to find...

By Zoe Dunn

Well, it’s been a disappointing conclusion to the year from a Pharma perspective: Plan B doesn’t work if you weigh more than 175 pounds, lowering LDL isn’t as effective as we thought, and the FDA is coming down on 23 & Me, shuttering it until it completes a medical device application. What all this says to me is that with innovation comes risk: risk that you might not succeed, and risk that raising the bar might increase your level of scrutiny. It doesn’t rain on my parade, though – we keep pushing for innovation at every turn.

Where will we net out for 2014...

By Nancy Meyer

Now that the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) has issued its final guidance on how it will regulate health-related smartphone applications, the marketing and developer community have heaved a collective sigh of relief.

Relief because, in its own words, the FDA said it will limit its focus on the small niche of apps that can be considered “mobile medical devices” that pose the greatest risk to patients. The definition is...

By Zoe Dunn, principal, Hale Advisors

Not only do I like Brand X, I LOVE it. I LOVE it so much that all I want to do is sing from the rooftops, shout from the mountains, and take out a full-page ad in The New York Times. I tell everyone on my Facebook page that they have to buy Brand X right now. I tweet that Brand X has changed my life, that it will change yours too, that my followers should follow Brand X’s hashtag right away! But, most importantly, I set up a Pinterest page to share other themes that remind me of Brand X, maybe other brands too.

Hey, Pharma – does...

DAVID CONNOR 

Michael Porter knows his stuff. He’s a professor at Harvard and widely respected author on strategic thinking in business, especially of multiple books with ‘Competitive’ in the title.  More importantly though is his attention to the less traditional side of competitive business, my side, the good side.

The capitalist system is under siege.

One ongoing focus of this attention has been his interrogation of the world of CSR. A couple of years...

By Karen Ammann and Doug Fulton

If the Internet is a “series of tubes,” how do you push ahead of a clog? Search Engine Optimization.

Google recently announced significant changes to their search engine optimization, cutely named Penguin 2.0, aiming to make search results more accurate and dissuade use of what is often termed “black hat” SEO techniques. There are many aspects to this announcement that target press releases.

Most significantly, press releases are now categorized as paid advertisements. Google will not increase the PageRank for any URLs that are...

By Zoe Dunn

This just in: another example of a Pharma company trying to use social media in a responsible way and being undermined by shifting technology – meta tags where you don’t expect them. You can read about it here.

We are learning, we are evolving, and we are trying to stay a step ahead of technology that is changing at a pace few can keep up with – especially if it is not the focus of your job, like many...

We’ve blogged here about something called integrated reporting, which would merge financial reporting (which public corporations are already required to do) with sustainability reporting (which only some companies do).

What we’ve missed – until now – is the need to brand this transformation.

Integrated reporting is a transformation for a whole bunch of interrelated reasons. First, financial reporting is mandatory and highly...

By Nancy Meyer

When Beth Bengtson and Zoe Dunn signed on Hale Advisors to sponsor a local One Billion Rising event in February 2013 to raise awareness and end violence against women, little did they know just how much their services would be needed.

Because Hale Advisors is a women-owned business, Beth and Zoe believe the company has a responsibility to empower women. They honor this commitment by not only donating 1% of company gross revenues each year to a local and an international charity, but also by putting those dollars to work for positive change.

Their vision...

By Zoe Dunn

What a great conference – some of the most consistently thoughtful content I have seen in one place in a long time. There was so much great content that it made for very long days (I believe our brains shut down after a while, which is a shame).

So my only input for the organizers – schedule fewer sessions and allow more time for engaging with the speakers. But engage we did anyway – the discussions were excellent, especially around...

Leading environment journalist, Sonja van Renssen, is joined by Richard Cowart, Director of the European programmes at the Regulatory Assistance Project (RAP), to discuss renewables policy.