Talent is the lifeblood of pharmaceutical innovation. But there’s more to winning top talent than simply recognizing the value of our “human resources.†It also takes putting that value into action by giving people a workplace that inspires and even delights. Today, forward-looking industry leaders are seeing competitive advantage in rethinking workplace strategy and the role it plays in attracting and retaining talent, according to a 2018 report (1). Once considered to be merely a passive background for discovery, a…
Author Archives: Roger Humphrey
Computational Science Changes Biolaboratory Design
Until relatively recently, life-science research was characterized by test tubes, Petri dishes, and centrifuges. Now, as with many industries, the life sciences are undergoing a digital transformation. Computational science is changing laboratory design. The healthcare industries always have generated large amounts of data. What has changed is the available information technology. With the growth of cloud computing, large data sets — and the high-speed tools for analyzing them — are available increasingly to a degree not possible with traditional servers…
Designing Laboratories for Flexibility and Collaboration
The blockbuster business model may have paid off in the past, but tomorrow’s biopharmaceutical successes will depend more on rapid and diverse discovery than on any single breakthrough. In the race to get new therapies from research and development (R&D) into pharmacies, next-generation laboratory space could become a game-changer. Blockbuster drugs typically were made in industrial laboratories — and industrial-strength measures were required to reconfigure those spaces as new research priorities emerged over time. Facing changing patient needs and ongoing…
Opportunities in Latin America Beyond the Olympics
Olympics fans aren’t the only ones turning their eyes toward Brazil. According to JLL’s fourth annual Life Sciences Outlook, the 2016 Summer Games host nation is also one of the world’s top 10 “Global Clusters to Watch,†thanks to its proven capacity for medical device manufacturing and a growing healthcare market. Increasingly, Latin America overall has been on the radar for life sciences companies seeking greater operational efficiency and opportunity, expanded market access, promising demographics, lower-cost land and labor, and…
Developing Markets Bring Opportunity But Not Without Real Estate Risk
Life-sciences markets develop in their own way, but one aspect they all have in common is the unpredictability of their growth. Not only are local economies unpredictable, but so are companies and their needs. Driven by competing pressures to seek new markets and new innovations while operating more efficiently, biopharmaceutical companies are increasingly setting their sights on new horizons abroad. Those investments are not without risks, however. Real estate is at the core of overseas expansion, and that’s where it…
Recruiting and Market Share Reshape Life Sciences Facilities and Locations
Where a biopharmaceutical company does business affects its profitability — as does how it manages its facilities and even where its non–customer-facing operations are located. In fact, facilities and real estate represent some of the biggest expenses for such companies. And yet, they are often overlooked. In today’s shifting global life-sciences landscape, site selection and management strategies are coming to the forefront as companies seek operating efficiencies, access to multidisciplinary talent, and cost-effective facilities. The following insights from JLL’s 2014…
Evolving Biologics Demand Spurs New Facility Needs
In the era of biologics manufacturing, chemical medicine production facilities are becoming the dinosaurs of the life sciences sector. Traditional chemical facility development and management systems are simply unequipped to support the highly sensitive — and highly regulated — process of developing and producing biological and biosimilar medicines. Renovating or building such facilities anew is a mammoth undertaking by any measure. All signs point to the value of evolving facility design and management to house more sophisticated biologic laboratory services.…