Amgen Mangement Style - Sharer on Leadership

Kevin Sharer talked about Leaderships. I like the way Amgen is running. Big company move like a small company in science.

here is what I get out from this article. When he asked what kind of people he look to hire, he mention sense of humor before intelligence etc.

Sharer's rule of 6

"Rule 6 is, you don’t take yourself too seriously. Rule 5 is, refer to 6. And there is no Rule 1 through 4. I really, really have a hard time getting along with Rule 6 felons. We’re all human and so we’re going to be misdemeanor violators once in a while. But I look for people who are not Rule 6 felons, because they just don’t work out."

That is pretty funny. I like this guys.

For more quantitative side, he also explain about the role of CEO with a graph (what a geek, but cool). But it is a good map to follow for those who what the heat of CEO. A good article on leadership.

Is NCAA evil?

Mankiw said "maybe". See the orginal article in WSJ.

By Dr Mankiw, please refer to you own priciple "Rational People Think at the Margin. A rational decision-maker takes action if and only if the marginal benefit of the action exceeds the marginal cost."

For student anthlete, "marginal benefit is going pro, marginal cost is playing 3-4 year for nothing". I assume they are rational, so they must think playing in college give them higher chance to go pro than playing in europe. See what Bradon Jennings is doing. But remember, most pro team is not going to take time to develop the 11 or 12th person on the team (from pitino).

In my opinion, the students are just taking their risk and hoping for higher return. Beside, how much you will trade for a college experience?

Big drugs companies hope consolidation will solve various problems

Read this piece from Economists
http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13278281

Those Executives are really out of their minds. Maybe Steve Jobs can help them. Get someone more innovative for heaven sakes!

If all of these big pharma want to save their companies, stop consolidating! This line from the article said it best “bigger firms are no better at innovation, and are often worse”. Here are my suggestions to save pharma industry:
1. Spin off your R&D groups.
a. You can tell R&D they are not productive. If they are, they won’t be heading to the cliff. So make a clean cut here.
2. Hire the financial expert from Wall Street.
a. This move can give them expertise in finance, learning about funding small start-up.
3. Transform them into “start up” bank.
a. Big pharma are good at using their resources to make money. So do just that. Loan money to start up and then profit from them.

Big drugs companies hope consolidation will solve various problems

Pharma and BiotechL Bigger and better or Bigger and Badder?

Graph from the Economist:

Pharma is moving to biotech. I think it is a bad move for Pfizer. If their major concern is pipeline. I think they have a better change to make their pipeline better by spending $68B on small to mid size start-ups.

Here is my solution to pfizer, you are done. You are no longer a innovative company, just accept this fact and move on. You should just be a holding company for small start up and helping them to finance clinical trials.