Aiming to become the top innovator in the healthcare industry, Chugai Pharmaceutical has positioned DX as a fundamental element of its growth strategy. Phase 1 of the CHUGAI DIGITAL VISION 2030, “Change our people & culture,” came to a conclusion in 2021, and now the company is reaching the climax of Phase 2: “Change our business.” With the company currently in a transition period as it moves towards Phase 3, “Change society,” in this article we speak to Suzuki, manager of the DX Unit, in detail about the current issues facing the company and his future outlook.

*Reproduced from Chugai Pharmaceutical’s official Note page (https://note.chugai-pharm.co.jp/) Article details and employee positions are current as of July 2024

Please tell us more about your background as an engineer and DX advisor and what you have learned through your work to date.

 

I began my career as an IT engineer, and it was an incredible opportunity for me.  In today’s so-called era of the cloud, even many of the people involved in operating these clouds often do not understand their mechanisms or how they are made. While of course it is not necessary to understand every single aspect, the more you know about its mechanisms the more your understanding can progress. This knowledge can then be used to examine how the technology can be applied, and enable you to keep up with ever-changing technological advancements. I think this experience as an engineer is what has allowed me to adopt an architect’s perspective when thinking about how to generate innovation.

After working as an engineer, I moved onto business development. In one project, we created a full set of solutions without properly investigating what we wanted to produce, and as a result the project was a failure. Learning from this, today I make sure to build a hypothesis, develop a single function, and only move onto the next phase when the function’s value has been verified. Known as the minimum viable product approach, today this step-by-step approach towards the final goal has become the norm. Put differently, it is an agile development process. At the time, however, this thinking did not exist and as a result the project unfortunately broke down. That said, there is no doubt that these experiences have helped to develop the design-based and agile development approaches we use today.

 

 

Could you tell us more about your previous role at Microsoft as a DX advisor?

My role was to speak to chief officers at leading companies to investigate their issues. I would then build a hypothesis, identify challenges based on thorough discussions with them, and consider the best approach to bring about sophisticated solutions.  The formulation and promotion of detailed strategies would actually involve working alongside partner companies. As an advisor, I would first consider why major reform is required, then what areas require reform, and finally how to implement this reform. It was a role in which I could make good use of the mistakes and learnings from my career to date.

Moreover, through my experience working for foreign companies and in foreign countries, I have also learned the importance of diversity and inclusion. Diversity and inclusion is essential for generating innovation. While Japanese companies tend to consider how they can coordinate people with diverse ideas but within the confines of the organization, in Europe and the US the approach to diversity is much more open. In the Western world, companies consider how they can make individual and diverse capabilities work in an innovative direction. If we take a cogwheel that is too big or missing half its cogs, for example, rather than simply getting rid of it, in the West they would consider how to transform this difference into a strength. My past experience has enabled me to adopt this same approach.

 

 

After Microsoft you joined Chugai Pharmaceutical to become manager of the DX Unit. How does DX appeal to you personally?

My favorite quote is “Anything one man can imagine, other men can make real.” DX gives us the opportunity to be free in our ideas and engage in reform without limitations. There are almost no industries that cannot benefit from DX. Even within an organization, there are various departments that are using DX to reform business and society. The fascinating thing about DX is that there is no restriction on where it can be used.

I believe that there are six important factors to successfully implement DX at a company. The first is the degree of seriousness and level of commitment of the leadership team. The second is the development of a pioneering organization. Leadership must communicate how serious they are about DX to stakeholders and create an organization that is conducive to successful DX. Only a passionate leadership team that enthusiastically leads DX initiatives can pave the way.

The third is a clear vision and strategy. When I joined Chugai Pharmaceutical I was amazed to see a clear DX vision, direction, and strategy. It was great to see all employees and partners working with both their own organizations and other organizations to drive digital reforms. That said, there is a need to reinforce the company’s collaboration to produce specific results, and this is the fourth important factor. The fifth is human resource development and cultural reform. Digital technologies are nothing more than tools, and the most important thing is to master these tools to generate positive outcomes. Chugai Pharmaceutical has set up the Chugai Digital Academy to develop people who can handle these technologies in-house. At the DX Unit that I manage, we are building a team by proactively seeking out mid-career hires. Our unit is rich in diversity and a proactive approach to taking on new challenges aimed at reform is beginning to take root.

The sixth important factor is cross-industry collaboration. If we think within the confines of the pharmaceutical industry alone it will be very difficult to generate innovation. Conversely, communicating with people from outside the industry could easily lead to the discovery of different solutions. You could find out, for example, that something troubling you has already been solved elsewhere, or even find a solution that could provide a huge breakthrough.

Simply put, innovation is the combination of existing value and the generation of synergy from this combination to create new value. The key to innovation is to bring together lots of people to share your vision with, to adopt an open mindset in the process, and to quickly go through a series of small successes and failures to get closer to your goal. In today’s digital era, I think this is precisely the way to go about business.

Do you have any ideas as to what types of companies it would be interesting to collaborate with?

Collaborating with BtoC companies could be very interesting. Our work is for the sake of individuals such as patients and medical professionals. As such, it is important that we consider these individuals in our work, but naturally it is difficult for us alone to connect with the world’s more than eight billion people. But this could be possible if we worked with platform companies like X, Instagram, or LINE Yahoo, for example.

On the other hand, it is essential that we are incredibly careful when choosing our technological partners. I think it is important that we switch from being reactive to proactive and that we communicate our vision with confidence. We must look at ways of working with partners who share the same vision and who are willing to work towards it together.

 

 

What other DX-related challenges is Chugai Pharmaceutical currently facing?

The first is that the company still has a vertical organizational structure. To rectify this, I hope to be able to work with personnel and other corporate departments to introduce new organizational structures, processes, cultures, and systems, for example.

The second is that although employees are excellent at logical thinking, they are not skilled at critical thinking. Complying with good practice guidelines (such as GCP and GMP and other laws and regulations on which they are based that relate to the development, manufacture, and sale of pharmaceuticals) and other regulations and rules that apply to pharmaceutical companies is essential to protect the lives of patients, but there is a sense that our ideas are restricted by these frameworks. In certain cases, I feel as though employees are imposing their own restrictions that are preventing them from taking action.

 

Of course, the mission of pharmaceutical companies is to protect people’s lives, and so it is paramount that we provide safe and reliable pharmaceuticals and services with absolutely no mistakes. But at the same time, if we stop questioning existing regulations, rules, and notions, employee ideas and intervention will no longer be required. In the future, we’ll end up entrusting everything to AI. Machines are more accurate than people, after all. If we are simply going to adhere to existing regulations and rules, we are just around the corner from an era in which it will be much more beneficial to simply entrust our work to machines.

Our role is to examine why these regulations are in place, to question whether the rules are correct, and to think about how to transform conventional notions to create something better. If we don’t adopt a mindset in which we go against conventional notions, there is a danger that we could be disrupted.

 

Moving forward, what challenges do you think Chugai Pharmaceutical will face and how can it overcome them?

 

 Not only at Chugai Pharmaceutical, but the pharmaceutical industry as a whole is slow to change. Perhaps one reason for this slow change is the industry's strict regulations and rules. But we cannot get too comfortable and think that everything will be fine just because we are compliant with these regulations and rules. This state of comfort can instantly collapse in times of great change and lead to the emergence of new competitors in the industry. This is why it’s important to forecast future change and take the necessary measures. At the same time, we must aim to become an athletic organization and create systems that enable us to respond to change.

Today’s era is one of future uncertainty. In these times, there is a limit to what one company can do to impact society in a major way. As such, it is essential that we create cross-industry partnerships. For us to become an organization that surrounding circles want to work with, we must communicate our enthusiasm and vision on an even broader, global scale, and build an organization that is rich in diversity with people of varying capabilities. This will ultimately lead to a process that can produce huge value and innovation.

 

YouTube link: https://youtu.be/naHIn9f1lp8

 

 

Profile
Takao Suzuki, Head of Digital Transformation Unit

 

Suzuki joined NTT Communications Corporation in 2000. After roles in SaaS development and consultancy for major corporations, he crossed over to the US where he worked on system architecture and project management for core financial systems. After returning to Japan, among others he worked as director of global sales strategies, CEO of the company’s southern China branch, and sales director for global IT businesses. In 2018 he joined Microsoft and became director of the DX advisory team for global customers in Japan and other parts of Asia. He assumed his current role in 2024.