The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word “crisis”. One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity. In a crisis, be aware of the danger — but recognize the opportunity.
– John F. Kennedy speech in Indianapolis, Indiana April 12th, 1959

The key to surviving in a cruddy economy is to recognize and be cognizant of the dangers, but there are always opportunities available to those companies with their eyes and ears wide open, ready to act.

I had an interesting conversation with my husband last night about people who are successful (some deservedly, others, not so much). He was sharing some of the thinking from Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers” – here is a summary, courtesy of amazon.com:

Gladwell’s basic thesis is that, in order to be successful in life (i.e. an “outlier” beyond the norm), being lucky and being privileged matter. However, anyone looking for any self-help should go somewhere else, notwithstanding the highly misleading subtitle, “the story of success.” Oh, also being very talented does indeed matter, but not as much as we think, and practicing a lot matters, but it is probably too late since you had to start young enough to put in 10,000 hours. There you have it.

I think my husband was trying to make me feel better – I work hard, as does my team, and still, some days we feel like we are pushing boulders up mountains and sometimes watching others take the prize that should have been ours (in our minds, anyway). If hard work (or even smart work) was tied directly to success, we would be billionaires.

Luck seems to play a bigger role in success than we know – which is good, because I was certainly not terribly privileged, am not particularly talented and rather grudgingly practiced (although I did do it!). Guess I’ll hang another lucky horseshoe, continue picking up pennies and call it good.

I’ve been experimenting with social media more and more – the good news is that I now have many more sources of information, people reaching out to me and collaboration going on.  The downside – having to update all these different sources.

I discovered ping.fm and now I can update all my sources at once – it works beautifully and setting it up was really easy.

Searchme.com is a really cool way to search – and you can search in categories and look and see if it is actually relevant before you go there – I like the way it is set up, allowing you to look at each home page in full and quickly move through the pages.

There’s lots of opportunity for pharma to get smart and create really useful stuff for our customers.

Everyone is trying to figure out what to do with the 18 (or more) websites/portals they have created – how do you get doctors in? How do you lead them to the good stuff (presuming you HAVE something good)?  What do you expect from them in return? Step back – figure our where you are now, figure out where you want to go and start mapping it out.  What do your targeted health care professionals use and like now?  What is missing?  What are the top 3 things your customer does in your site – make the path to those things clear and easy – lower the barriers to play in your space – don’t ask them 75 market research questions – keep requirements minimal – if you don’t NEED a DEA number don’t ask for it.

User experience will really come into play – more companies are stepping back and re-architecting sites, more company portals will be built, offering all the goodies from all the brands with one point of entry – doctors will be able to get samples and the latest updates, including mini mobile details on any device, anytime.  Since we can’t hand out mugs and pens anymore and half of the sales force is gone, we have to start figuring out how best to connect with the docs.

Overall, the world o’ pharma is going to get a lot more complicated – helping your doctors get what they want on your site shouldn’t be.