Comment by rwmj
2 days ago
Sure, but Pharma A is full of career managers who never kill drugs under development and Upstart B relentlessly culls drugs that don't work early on. Upstart B's failure rate at the final stages is under 50% so they develop 5 times as many drugs, beating the existing company, and indeed all other drug companies.
Since this isn't happening, it seems this might not be the explanation.
For me it seems this simplification falls flat right away when you take into account budget constraints.
It is not software development where you can start a project every month see how it goes and drop it or pivot.
I guess they use a lot of computer aided models before they even start serious parts but I believe this discussion is not about failure rates on that stage because then it would be 99%