Daiichi Sankyo: Steering a Global Organization

In the spring of 2023, Sunao Manabe, CEO of Daiichi Sankyo, reflected on a pivotal decision. A large Western pharmaceutical company had made a bid to partner with Daiichi Sankyo to develop the next three products in its oncology pipeline. Daiichi Sankyo, a 125-year old Japanese pharmaceutical company, had shifted its strategic focus toward oncology in 2015. In 2019, through a partnership with Western pharmaceutical company DrugCo, Daiichi Sankyo developed Enhertu®, an antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) that was highly successful in the global oncology market. Subsequently, Daiichi Sankyo expanded its research portfolio to develop more ADCs that could target new cancer types and undertook a culture transformation initiative to support its globalization and growth efforts. Following a year of meeting with the Executive Management Committee (EMC), many different perspectives had been raised with arguments for and against partnering. While a partnership might expedite access to Western markets, R&D executives worried about compromising the company's independence and agility in scientific development. Manabe now had to decide whether Daiichi Sankyo should develop the next three ADCs in its pipeline independently or launch a new partnership with PharmaCo.