Competitive advantage in the pharmaceutical industry depends on a company's ability to transform information and knowledge into FDA-approved commercial products (i.e., drugs). The modern pharmaceutical industry is highly information-intensive and information technology (IT) is a critical enabler for competitive advantage.

Without IT, the modern pharmaceutical industry would be impossible. With such high interdependence between business and IT required to generate new knowledge and new products, harmonization of business and IT goals are essential to meaningfully enhance a pharmaceutical company's competitive position.

The harmonization of business and IT goals is commonly referred to as "strategic alignment" and its importance — documented since the 1970's — is that strategicalignment enhances the likelihood that a transformational business strategy will be successful.

Responding to Industry Challenges
In my recent discussions with pharmaceutical executives, the topic of improving alignment between business and IT has assumed new importance as threats to the pharmaceutical industry's sustainable double- digit profitability have multiplied (e.g., genetic-based therapeutics vs. chemistry based therapeutics, declining R&D productivity, escalating drug development costs, increased competition due to globalization and competitive alliances, heightened M&A activity, etc.) and the requirement to control or reduce operational costs has become paramount.