Amgen of Amgen Company of America goes its own way.

The Royal Ballroom of Hyatt Regency in midtown Manhattan is usually used to hold serious and boring lunches. This kind of lunch is generally not very noisy, and people always take a nap. But on a Tuesday at the end of March, when Amgen CEO Kevin Sharer stepped onto the podium of the ballroom, the scene in front of him was like a rock concert. This is the first time that this biotechnology leader has held "R&D Day". Nearly 500 investors and analysts poured into the hall. They and other participants scrambled for the position, expecting to cheer for the rally.

Shaler did a lot of things to arouse the curiosity of these people. Since taking office in April 2000, he has been trying to transform this company in Thousand Oaks, California, without touching the foundation of its valuable biotechnology enterprise. This is a difficult performance to balance, which not only solves the company's chronic diseases, but also creates new pressures. Transformation involves all aspects of the company's business, including introducing new talents, new partners and new production methods. For example, in the past three years, Schaller has recruited many senior managers from traditional pharmaceutical companies such as Merck and Lilly. Roger Perlmutter, the director of R&D, is one of the most outstanding newcomers. He is very clever. He borrowed the system of big pharmaceutical companies, established a "command and control" process of drug research, and tried to combine the free creativity of biotechnology companies with the more traditional and prudent methods of their pharmaceutical competitors.

This is a new model, which is tested every day. But Amgen has no choice but to change. This biotechnology company developed smoothly for most of the 1990s. In the early 1990s, it introduced two heavyweight drugs-Epogen (erythropoietin) and Neupogen (leucopoietin) for injection, which earned nearly $654.38+0.7 billion in sales revenue. In 2003, the sales revenue of Epogen was $2.4 billion, and that of Neupogen was $654.38+0.3 billion. With its high profit margin, Amgen turns a large part of its turnover into cash, but its R&D expenditure rarely turns into new products needed to promote the growth slowdown.

The whole pharmaceutical industry is now trying to restore the momentum of production growth. At present, Amgen has transformed from a beloved biotechnology company into a complete pharmaceutical company, which has attracted close attention from the entire pharmaceutical industry. According to the statistics of the Center for Drug Research, in the past decade, the total expenditure on drug research and development has doubled, while the number of new drugs released has dropped by one third. Pharmaceutical companies like Merck and Pfizer, burdened with layers of bureaucracy, are desperately trying to replace those heavyweight drugs that have lost patent protection. Now they have become large-scale and lifeless marketing and sales enterprises. In the past three years, biotechnology enterprises have suffered from the market downturn, and the sources of funds have gradually dried up. Dozens of companies have shrunk in size, and some have even disappeared completely. From 65438 to 0994, the biotechnology company Millennium Pharmaceutical still boasted that "anything is possible" on the T-shirts distributed to employees. Seven years later, the words on the T-shirt became "Dedication to Execution". It's not like a slogan!

In recent years, some industry observers believe that Amgen will be the best hope for the pharmaceutical industry to turn losses into profits. This is especially true when Shiller actively meets the challenge to manage this huge and creative company. The reflection of these high expectations in reality is that Amgen's current market value is as high as 83 billion US dollars, surpassing the industry giants Pfizer and Johnson &; Johnson) and Merck. However, with the rapid expansion of Amgen's scale (last year's sales were $8.4 billion and profits were $2.3 billion), analysts have different views. The difference is whether Amgen still has the potential to guarantee the premium of speculative biotech stocks when earnings per share increase by 30% every year. Recently, the target price of Amgen stock fluctuated between 62 and 90 dollars, which also reflected people's confusion in understanding. Some analysts have recently slashed their profit forecasts.

It is precisely because of these circumstances that investors and analysts can't wait to flock to the banquet hall of Hyatt Hotel to hear what product information Amgen CEO can bring. They have high expectations, but they are somewhat disappointed. Scheler didn't offer a better profit prospect. More importantly, he didn't bring them surprising news, and he didn't announce a heavyweight new drug that could be popular in the market. After the day's activities, Amgen's share price fell more than $2 to close at $57.83, down 20% from the high price of $72 in July. A few days later, Sheryl really brought good news. He announced an investment of $654.38+0.3 billion to acquire a 79% stake in Tularik, a cancer biotechnology company. The market is basically unmoved by this. Some people expressed doubts and laughed that Amgen had completely become a big pharmaceutical company. Some people criticize that it has lost its vitality. However, the company's leadership still has confidence in its ability to resist doubts and resolve criticisms. Perlmutter said: "We just want to prove that a company worth $80 billion can still maintain that feature."

Kevin Schaller held the highest position when the market was in a downturn. He is the new CEO of Amgen, but he is not a new employee of the company. He has been chief operating officer for eight years under former CEO GordonBinder. During this period, he quickly became familiar with the biotechnology industry. Binder knew nothing about this industry before 1992 recruited him from MCI, a long-distance telephone operator. He used to be the head of MCI's commercial marketing department, with a turnover of $6 billion, but left the company after confirming that he had no chance to take the top position.

After retiring from the navy, aspiring Scheler began his business trip in McKinsey. Soon, he transferred to General Electric Company. There, Iowa served as a senior consultant for mergers and acquisitions at General Electric Company. 1989, at the age of 4 1, he got a lucrative job in the aircraft engine department of General Electric Company, but he resigned on his first day in office and unexpectedly jumped to MCI. Shaler attributed the decision to his youthful spirit. Jim 8226, CEO of 3M Company; McNarney was working in the computer service department of General Electric Company. He remembered Shaler as "energetic, optimistic and energetic", but he was easily emotional.

Perhaps because of his poor eyesight, Shaler didn't become a naval pilot like his father, but his keen eyes made him see that times would change when he became the top leader of Amgen. In 2000, although Epogen and Neupogen were still in a relative monopoly position, Amgen began to study products like Aranesp. This is a drug for treating anemia, which lasts longer than erythropoietin, and can compete with Proch Park Jung Su, the key drug for treating anemia of Johnson & Johnson Company (Amgen applied for a patent for erythropoietin, which can stimulate the production of red blood cells, but in 1985, Amgen, which is short of cash, reached an agreement with Johnson & Johnson Company to share the global market of this drug). Amgen also plans to enter areas with fierce competition such as inflammation and tumor. "We have gone from monopoly to competition," Scheler said. I know that no company has ever succeeded ... never. " He smiled and then added, "So I care about this."

Shiller knew that Amgen's cherished corporate culture needed to be changed. Rothman and Binder are the first two CEOs of the company and the actual heads of the R&D department. During their tenure, the company neglected research (laboratory work) and development (clinical trials). Marketers are not involved in the drug research and development process at all. It is no accident that Amgen has not introduced new drugs in recent ten years.

Shale firmly believes that Amgen must be reformed if it wants to continue to develop. During his eight years working in the core department of the company, he found a large number of redundant positions. After taking power, he began to reorganize the top management and acted like an "airborne" CEO. The new CEO cleaned up the management as soon as he took office. Half of the original 40 vice president positions no longer exist. In order to speed up the company's transition from old to new, he also recruited many new employees from the camp of large pharmaceutical companies. In these companies, the competition for talents is extremely fierce.

George Moreau, 52, was one of the first employees to join Sherer. He was the head of GlaxoSmithKline Wellcome (with a turnover of $6.5 billion) in the United States and took over the sales and marketing business of Amgen. The author asked him: What's wrong with Amgen's commercialization process? He leaned over with a smile and asked, "How long have you been here?" He said there was no process, only a series of unrelated steps. In order to integrate these steps, he quickly established a product strategy team, which was jointly led by clinicians and senior marketing representatives who would "hold the product".

However, the wisest thing for Shiller is to introduce Perlmutter. He is Amgen's first real R&D director. He worked at Merck for four years and climbed to the position of executive vice president of drug research and development. Previously, he taught in the Department of Immunology at the University of Washington, and enjoyed an excellent reputation in the impeccable academic field. Stephen Williams, director of biotechnology talent recruitment at Bench International, a research company, said, "He attracted people with his frankness and scientific knowledge." At Merck, the team he led developed the anti-inflammatory drug Vioxx, with current sales of $2.5 billion. Like Molo, Perlmutter, 5 1 year-old, is also facing an isolated environment. The two teams, drug research and clinical trial, are independent and do not communicate with each other. In April 20001year, when he called a meeting of senior staff of two teams, he said that it was the first time that so many people were sitting in the same room [1997 Daniel Punek, former research director of Amgen, who left his post, disagreed, claiming that during his tenure, "the communication between the research department and the development department was very good"].

When the research department met with the development department, Perlmutter found that quite a few research projects would never come to fruition. To his surprise, Amgen has more research projects under way than Merck. Therefore, Perlmutter cut off half of them and injected R&D funds into the most attractive drugs. "What I want to do is to introduce the strictness and discipline of the best R&D institutions into Amgen without destroying its entrepreneurial spirit," Perlmutter said. "To achieve this, we must introduce a command and control mechanism."

Perlmutter set out to gather employees who can adapt to strict requirements and discipline. In a high-level position, he placed two people he had known since he came to Merck: Joseph Miletic, senior vice president of laboratory research and preclinical research; Beth Seidenberg, Senior Vice President of Development. Both of them are members of Amgen's Executive Committee, which means that among Amgen's 1 1 senior management, four are from Merck. The other is Hassan Daiem, the information director. Some people may question whether it is wise to attract so many people from the struggling Merck, but Merck has always been successful in attracting talented scientists (retaining talents is another matter). From the senior manager down, Amgen's business departments are all talents of large pharmaceutical companies.

60% employees in R&D department came to the company after 200 1 and 1. The rapid absorption of new employees has had a profound impact on the nature of the company. Mark Levin, CEO of Millennium Pharmaceutical Company (headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which experienced rapid growth in the 1990s), said that he often recruited employees from former large pharmaceutical companies, but he preferred those who had worked in other biotechnology companies for a while first, because this time could help them get rid of old habits. The recruiters of biotechnology companies believe that this is not necessarily the case in Amgen, because now Amgen has more cultural similarities with large pharmaceutical companies than with small biological enterprises. John Phillip, a headhunter in the biotechnology industry, said, "It is easier to enter Amgen from GlaxoSmithKline than from a biotechnology startup."

Perlmutter's rigid R&D operation method may be necessary, but it annoys some employees. An Amgen employee from a large company who is engaged in preclinical research said: "Scientific research has always been the top priority, but now everything has become a business decision." New employees are often surprised by Amgen's management. Amgen spent $625 million to build a beautiful and conspicuous new R&D center overlooking Elliot Bay in Seattle. Victor Fung, deputy director of the center's process development, said that there are too many people involved in the decision-making. "I feel like a full-time switchboard operator." The employee engaged in preclinical research added, "It is completely different from the company I worked for when I came."

Scheler said that he totally disagreed with some people who said that commercial motives have taken precedence over excellent scientific research. Although both he and Perlmutter have heard that some people are uneasy about the suppressed bureaucracy, they say that this is a regrettable phenomenon in large organizations, especially those that have developed so rapidly. With the change of Amgen culture, employees also have a two-way flow. A venture capitalist in Los Angeles said, "Some resignations have never happened before Amgen." Amgen's turnover rate was 5.2% in 2000, and now it is 6.7%, which is slightly higher, but still lower than that of large pharmaceutical companies. Therefore, although the old employees who stay in the company may not like the new Amgen, and some laugh at it as "Merck of the West", they are trying to adapt.

For a long time, Amgen's position was both treasure and fierce. It is located just north of Malibu Beach in Santa Monica Mountain. If the climate where you live is not pleasant enough, you may think it is a treasure. It is fierce because Thousand Oaks, northwest of Los Angeles, is barren for biotechnology enterprises. Amgen's base camp used to be very desolate, and many episodes of the TV series Smoke were filmed there. Isolation has become a major feature of Amgen. Amgen's similar companies, such as Genentech and Genezyme, have long-term cooperation with emerging start-ups in their respective headquarters, while Amgen hardly does so, content with the large amount of funds brought by Epogen and Neupogen.

In the process of dealing with some smaller biotechnology companies, Amgen gradually gained a somewhat lofty and even arrogant reputation. These small companies are eager to exchange their inventions for Amgen's cash and products. A biotechnology consultant said, "People used to think that Amgen was inaccessible because it had two successful products, so they seemed to feel that they didn't need to absorb new technologies" (the company's third heavyweight product, Enli, which was used to treat rheumatoid arthritis, was acquired after it bought Immunex in 2002 at a cost of $65.438+003 billion).

After Shiller took over, he made a quick decision. The company must abandon this strategy of going it alone and actively seek cooperation to strengthen production. However, the company's think tank didn't realize that they were in trouble in reaching an agreement until February this year, when their bid for Scios, a cardiovascular professional company, failed and Johnson & Johnson acquired it. When Dampere Mutt came into contact with Scios, he found that people in this company still held an old view of Amgen, which was a blow to him. He said: "People outside don't know how different this company has become. We should go out and talk to people. " As a result, they ran around and sent introduction materials to start-ups in Boston, San Francisco and Seattle, and soon received returns: Amgen signed 68 agreements last year, compared with 40 in 2002 and 25 in 20001year.

The transaction that best reflects the company's new strategy is the cooperation agreement signed with Tularik, a cancer company in southern San Francisco, last year. Sheller recently agreed to buy this biotechnology enterprise. Oncology is the hottest drug development field in biotechnology enterprises, and Amgen has invested more resources in cancer than any other specific drug. Now, Amgen is not focusing on drugs that play a peripheral role (such as eliminating the infection of chemotherapy patients), but developing drugs against cancer itself. It has been talking about cooperation with Tularik for many years, but it was not until February 2003 that Perlmutter came to the San Francisco Bay Area with a team that things became clear.

After the meeting, Perlmutter had a private talk with Dave Gaarder, CEO of Tularik. Gaarder is a pioneer in biotechnology. He was the first scientist hired by Genentech in 1978, where he studied the company's first drug-pancreatin. Tularik has talked with two companies about its cancer gene exploration program. Perlmutter said, "This is unacceptable. We are your ideal partner. " Less than a month later, Amgen made a more attractive offer and signed an agreement. Gaarder said, "The advantage of small companies is that they can act as soon as they make a decision. It is good to have a big partner who moves as fast as us. "

The agreement with Tularik also shows Amgen's determination to enter the field of small molecule drugs. These drugs can be made into tablets and are currently monopolized by large pharmaceutical companies. In early March, Amgen obtained permission from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to develop its first oral drug Sensipar, which can treat a gland disease called parathyroid dysfunction. Amgen's involvement in the field of small molecules is of great significance for two reasons: first, it has added a treatment for special diseases; Second, the research and development of small molecular drugs is completely different from that of macromolecular drugs, which is much more difficult and requires a lot of manpower and material resources. Scheler believes that such investment is necessary to ensure Amgen's future.

New york's "R&D Day" is the first time Amgen has held such an exhibition, because its previous product development is not worth boasting about. Aranesp (erythropoietin drug with longer curative effect) and Neurasta (improved drug of Neupogen released in 2002) have achieved amazing success, but they are both variants under the same research topic. Amgen also expanded the use of Enrique, a drug for rheumatoid arthritis, reaching the level of heavyweight drugs last year (sales of US$ 6,543.8+0.3 billion) for treating ankylosing spondylitis and psoriatic arthritis (45 million adults in the United States suffer from dermatophytosis, of which 23% suffer from this kind of arthritis). Amgen hopes to use it to treat psoriasis later this year. Sensipar is the only product launched by the company in the past two years. Rival Genentech recently obtained some high-profile drug production licenses, such as Avastin, a drug for rectal cancer. Last year, as many as 20 projects were put into production, and the total R&D expenditure of these projects was less than half of Amgen's $6,543.86 billion. Burt Adelman, research director of BiogenIdec, Amgen's competitor, said: "In terms of its scale, it has not made much progress."

This situation must change! In the first three years of Perlmutter (200 1-2003), Amgen has developed 23 projects (which means starting the preclinical research process), which is 1 more than the total number of projects initiated in the previous ten years. The most promising monoclonal antibody is AMG 162, which will enter the third phase of clinical trials this year (after the acquisition of Tularik, five more projects will be put into production in the clinical trial stage). In this year's clinical trials, the number of patients Amgen needs to recruit has increased from 27,700 in 2002 to 50,000. Perlmutter said, "Compared with many large pharmaceutical companies, we are a very productive company."

How do people view dual characteristics as the core of Amgen? Amgen executives want the company to have both. If they are better than big pharmaceutical companies, they will be happy to make such a comparison; But if it involves "culture" and the like, they will flatly refuse to make any comparison with big pharmaceutical companies. We can understand that Amgen or other biotechnology companies will fall into fear if they are labeled as "big pharmaceutical companies", and these labels bear the notoriety of "shrinking creativity". "I now regard Amgen as a pharmaceutical company," said an employee engaged in preclinical trials. "The company must take this step if it wants to succeed."

Visitors to Shaler's office will see a huge modern art portrait of General George A. Custer on the wall, in which the general bowed his head gloomily, reminding Shaler never to underestimate his opponent. After reading the biography of horatio nelson, a British naval hero written by writer Edgar Vincent last year, Shiller found a new role model and customized Nelson's portrait. Nelson is famous for disobeying orders and taking risks, but unlike Caster, he won't rush into danger. Vincent believes that Nelson is also very good at communication and cooperation, and will use political skills to win the support of insiders for his innovation plan. From this point of view, this is exactly what Shaler should do in Amgen-act boldly and quickly after getting everyone's unanimous consent, and take risks that are carefully estimated and have huge returns. The entire pharmaceutical industry will wait and see.