Heavyweight Team strategy at Eli Lilly
...ip either. Project managers, as well as functional team members, were overloaded as they were assigned to four to five project projects to work on simultaneously. Lastly, meeting monthly was too infrequent and detailed project plans were unavailable. The need to have employees work on multiple projects at the same time seems to have indicated the lack of resources. Also, the lack of detailed plans and no clear accountabilities could lead to ineffective processes. Moreover, the poor values were shown by no standards of decisions making process. Although the function-based structure appears to be more appropriated in dealing with incremental and sustaining innovation, since these kinds of innovations are more naturally connected with existing technologies or products and could be structured better in their research and development. There still seems to be a need for Lilly to improve its organizational structure. The Heavyweight Team Approach For Lilly, the goal is to invent a new therapeutic class so that a first-mover advantage can be obtained. This causes the development of disruptive innovations such as the case of Evista. This kind of innovation required its own set of supporting resources, values, and processes. As shown in Exhibit 1, there seems to be a poor fit for disruptive innovations with Lilly’s values (by looking at the x-axis), at these values do not provide the necessary prioritization process needed to support these kinds of innovations. Additionally, there appears to be a poor fit with the organization’s processes as well (by looking at the y-axis), since function-based approaches do not provide the inter-disciplinary focus needed to effectively and efficiently develop a disruptive innovation. The analysis resulted in a recommendation of the “C” approach illustrated in the Innovator’s Solution, which essentially suggest the use of the heavyweight team approach with autonomous organization structure for the development of novel drugs. The Impact of Heavyweight Team Structure Seemingly, many positive impacts of the use of the heavyweight teams were observed in the development of both Zyprexa and Evista. First, heavyweight teams acted autonomously and with clear priority, providing the appropriate processes and values, and the focus needed for the desired rapid development. Second, the cross-functional nature of these teams provided the inter-disciplinary knowledge that was a necessary resource to develop these drugs quickly. Last, strong leadership and clear team responsibilities provide the necessary structure to deal with the dynamics of such disruptive innovations. However, there were some disadvantages to this approach. First, the abundant authority given to the teams might have undermined the perceived influence and control of the senior management over these teams. Second, conflicts occurred between functions and the heavyweight teams due to the fight for resources. Third, the heavyweight team approach was expensive, since it demeaned a trem...