Digital Innovation

Panic followed by a distant stare

Ask 100 different Medical Affairs professionals what an insight is and you'll likely get 100 different answers. You'll also likely get 100 mini signs of panic at having to explain the term on the spot, followed by a look into space, and an answer that goes from left to right and is filled with such pithy business words: "strategy-informing", "actionable", "customer-focused".

It's a concerning situation for a function who define one of their core responsibilities as "providing insights". And a costly one. When you do some quick maths calculations of the hours per year spent by Medical Affairs roles across the globe on insights in one form or another ("collecting", "gathering", "generating", "sharing", "actioning" - although we'll get to the validity of these terms later) multiplied by the average salary - the figure is substantial. At a conservative estimate based on UK working weeks and salaries, it's approximately $1 billion.  

$1 billion worth of time spent on insights per year.  

The reality when accounting for the global salaries and the total industry (not just Medical Affairs) is something larger. Likely in the range of 10s of billions. Billions of dollars of time talking about and doing something where people are all talking to one another about widely different things.

Across my time in industry I've been interested in getting to the bottom of this. How is it that such an important activity, detailed in many job descriptions, is unclear to most people? And not just in junior positions. Arguably the understanding gets worse the further up you get up the ladder. This is evident in the fact that the explanations tend to get longer, windier and more convincing. Something that is counter to the definition of true understanding and expertise as per physicist Richard Feynman:

Anyone can make a subject complicated but only someone who understands can make it simple.

So what is the driver of this?

To start, it's important to go back to first-principles. To a solid foundation, a universally agreed definition of an insight. And what better way to do that then to go to the dictionary definition of the word (in this case the Cambridge dictionary). An insight is:

(the ability to have) a clear, deep, and sometimes sudden understanding of a complicated problem or situation.

Now definitions differ ever so slightly between individual dictionaries, but the the overlap is strong. Across all, an insight has three criteria:

1. It's clear

2. It's deep or penetrating

3. It gets to the bottom of the inner nature of something

Simple right?  

However, once you get into pharma - the definition morphs all over the place. And it's this insight (used in its true form) which I believe explains the confusion - the phrase has been bastardised by business, pharma, and Medical Affairs. It's been bastardised in a manner that seems to happen to many things once they enter the business world - They take on a new (often complicated, opaque, and meaningless) definition.

The definition of an insight remains the same regardless of whether it's in business, personal life, or the sciences.  

People mistake a type of insight (e.g. an actionable one, a one that informs the strategy, a behavioural one) for the definition of an insight.  

An insight can be actionable, it can inform the strategy. But that doesn't mean it has to.

Absolutely, in business you would want a good portion of your insights to be actionable. And yes, you would want a portion of them (as long as they're value-adding) to inform the strategy. But that doesn't mean that to be an insight, it must be one or both of these things. An insight that you messed up the launch of a product due to a bad decision may be neither actionable nor inform the strategy but it is valuable nonetheless. It may not pay-off immediately but this insight, combined with further insights, may later lead to wisdom and far greater pay-offs down the line.

Based on my thinking at this moment in time, the source of this bastardisation of the phrase appears to comes from two sources. Combined together and given time, they have allowed the phrase to diverge so far from its core:

1. A lack of understanding

Everyone talks about insight but nobody (or a very limited number of people) take the time and the curiosity to understand it. Like a mutation, all it takes is one person with limited understanding of the word to explain it to another to explain it to another with a small twist. The misinformation proliferates. A simple piece of curiosity, a google search, followed by half of day of following the trail of the origin of the word, whilst being deliberate to look outside the pharma bubble, leads you to a very clear definition.

2. It's a sexy word.

Agencies, consultants, vendors, internal stakeholders, in my opinion (wittingly or unwittingly) take advantage of the lack of understanding to use the word even more (Side note: This is also the same in Omnichannel). An "insight tool" which promises to "give you quick access to actionable and strategy-informing insights" sounds a lot more appealing than a "knowledge collecting tool" where "you still have to spend the time reflecting and processing this information in order to form and uncover your own insights". I know which one I would be more tempted to buy!

When you combine these two things, it's no surprise that misunderstanding runs rife and confusion is the norm.

"One does not simply walk into an insight": The uncomfortable truth

If an insight has to be clear, deep, and get to the inner nature of things, this realisation leads to a number of uncomfortable truths that Medical Affairs teams and individuals have to face:

• There's no such thing as "collecting insights: Most of what Medical Affairs is defining as an insight is simply data or knowledge (read about the differences here: https://www.ontotext.com/knowledgehub/fundamentals/dikw-pyramid/).  

• It's hard work: There are no shortcuts. If you follow the theory of how insights are created (more on this in part two), they often don't simply just appear without work. They require hard work, focused research, deliberate reflection and then stepping away. Just as you can't expect that closing your eyes for 2 minutes will give you the same results of meditating for an hour, the same rings true for insights.  

• It's not a production line - you can't just "generate insights": you can't just throw money, more time, processes, and tools at it with the hope of creating more. Yes, you'll create more data and information, however without a disciplined approach, you'll just get more noise.

• Incentives should be re-aligned: Linked to the above, incentives need to move away from collection of more information towards a deeper understanding of the situation in question.  

• Have curiosity, look outside of pharma: Often an insight (another plug for part two) comes from connecting two previously unnoticed topics. It's surprising to learn that Darwin's theory of survival of the fittest was likely inspired by Thomas Malthus' paper on human population growth (source: https://darwin200.christs.cam.ac.uk/darwins-evolution)

What would you like to see / hear more of on this topic

I am fully aware that this is an active topic - One with lots of opinions (which I am gladly adding to!) so please do let me know your thoughts (positive, negative, in between) on the topic.  

• Does this resonate?

• What do you see as the fix?

• What you would like to see more on?  

For part two: I will be writing more on the theory of how insights are uncovered, the applicability of AI in this process, and tangible next steps for getting back to basics. Please comment and let me know your interest in part two.

Disclaimer: No AI used in the research, writing, structuring, processing of this.

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