Creating an environment for innovation

Thursday, February 18th, 2010

Charbel Tengroth
Charbel Tengroth

Here follows some personal thoughts on how to encourage and promote innovation in the workplace.

Again, this is a topic on which there is written entire libraries worth of books, articles, workshop and course materials. On the other hand, this is something that is very sought after, yet hard to create.

So, here are my personal thoughts and recommendations for promoting innovation!

  • Perhaps most important is to make sure there are procedures in place to collect innovative ideas! Holding brainstorming sessions routinely is a great way foster innovative thinking. It also helps to train away the natural reaction to say “no”; the most common cause of death of innovative ideas.
  • Another important component is to have an organization that allows innovation work. In other words; if you have no time to set aside for innovations you will not innovate (some might choose to moonlight, but I consider that working outside the work environment and hence outside the scope of this rambling).
  • Supportive managers: an extremly important part of innovation are managers that support innovative work by setting aside time to do the work, that champions your ideas at review meetings, project meetings and so on, and managers that give you the monetary funds to carry out the work (if needed). A manager that says “no” will not only kill that particular idea, but might kill all innovative ideas that his/her organisation want to put forth. On the other hand, a manager that says “yes” not only gives an idea the opportunity to grow and blossom, but also create a fertile ground for new ideas to be put forward.
  • Reward innovation: this is really a given if innovations are sought after. Within Pfizer manufacturing each site has the opportunity to hand out innovation awards every quarter for teams and individuals. This is a good example of fostering innovation by example; the awarded colleagues are rewarded for their good work, quite a few awards are handed out every year, and the awardees may function as innovation champions locally.

So then, how to say “yes!” to a preposterous idea? First of all, don’t assume you have all the answers, resist the urge to say “no!” and let your colleague present his/her case. Try to formulate questions in order to address the weak(est) points in the idea, as well as those designed to highlight the strength(s). This might help the innovator to sharpen the idea, as well as avoid obvious pitfalls.

If you’re still not convinced, say “yes!” conditionally. Try and formulate a minor study designed at testing the basic premise of the idea together with the innovator. Again, this will help making the idea into something concrete and measurable. If you at this stage still can’t get around making a significant investment, ask the innovator to make do with less resources: a computer model, scale-down version, mock-up, etc.

Always make the innovator enumerate the benefits of the idea, that that in time savings, monetary savings, increased yield, revenue, etc. This will help you gauge the ROI and the risk of supporting the idea.

Always include failure of the idea as a probable outcome, because many if not most will fail.

Finally, being able to help and foster innovation is much more fun than saying “no”!

A recent article titled “An Update Regarding Follow-On Biologics”

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010

Libbey Yates
Libbey Yates

Many issues in the debate over allowing “follow-on” or “generic” versions of biologics and biotechnology drugs are well presented in an article titled “An Update Regarding Follow-On Biologics.”  I’m curious to hear reactions of others to this article.

Science Outreach

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

Libbey Yates
Libbey Yates

The presentation  Why Chemistry, designed by Sofia Davies , RSC Chemnet Abbassador, is currently utilized to encourage students to consider careers in chemistry.  I would like to thank Pfizer for allowing scientists in the field to impact the community with these initiatives.

Association for Women in Science

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

Libbey Yates
Libbey Yates

The St. Louis Association of Women in Science chapter hosted Women in Science Day at Washington University St. Louis on November 4, 2009.  Over 150 young women and teachers attended a career panel and hands-on-activities.  

The Association of Women in Science mission is dedicated to the achievement of equality, ethics and full participation of women in science, technology and medicine.  Bridging  AWIS Young Scientist Program (YSP) and the Pfizer Science Outreach program has allowed both organizations to join forces in exposing young Midwestern women to cutting edge science. 

Women in Science Day began with opening remarks which lead to numerous activities such as: Drug Discovery, liquid nitrogen ice cream, seismology and slinkies, minerals and crystal growth, planetary science adventure, evolution revolution, DNA from strawberries, create your own polymer, explosive chemical reactions, move like primates, Dinosaur fossils and stream tables. 

Of these activities, Pfizer Scientist Cathy Hanau lead the Drug Discovery session which entailed discussing how a molecule moves to market with interactive demonstrations of chemical reactions.  Faith Hartsfield lead a hands-on-activity about germs and epidemics.  Lastly, Libbey Yates lead an interactive demonstration of the states of mater using liquid nitrogen to highlighting sublimation.  Pfizer scientists’ closing remarks ended with a discussion of careers in science.  This provided yet another opportunities to gain insight and expose these young women to science.

Diving Into Film-Coated Tablets

Thursday, January 21st, 2010

Aknoch
Axel Knoch

Many if not most of the tablets in the market are not just tablets they are film-coated tablets. Typically, polymeric films containing plasticizer and pigments are applied onto tablet cores to protect the drug substance from environmental factors as light and moisture in order to improve chemical stability. Film-coatings are also applied to mask unpleasant taste and to enhance swallowability. A film coat can add mechanical strength to a tablet formulation, too.  In addition, handling of film-coated tablets in packaging operations of the pharmaceutical industry is preferred over uncoated tablets due to reduced dust formation and reduced risk of contaminating operators at packaging lines. And not to forget: there are a number of functional coatings e.g. to provide modified release of the active ingredient and enteric coating to protect the active pharmaceutical ingredient from the acidic environment in the stomach. “Cosmetic” coatings enhance the marketability of products and support patient compliance e.g. by proper product identification and differentiation.

For various reasons development scientists are interested in characterizing the film-coat applied to better understand the coating process and the performance of the resulting dosage form. Does the film really cover the whole surface of the tablet core? Is the film adhering well? What is the exact film thickness and how homogeneous is the film layer?

Until only recently there were only destructive measures available to characterize applied film-coats. One had to cut the dosage form prior to microscopically analysing the film layer. By cutting, however, physical damage of the film can not always be avoided and therefore results may be misleading. Fortunately, better ways to dive into film-coated tablets are available now.

You may have encountered computer tomography (CT) as a powerful analytical tool e.g. for full body scanning. The technology is also being used for characterization of all kind of technical materials. But it has not been intensively used in the pharmaceutical industry before to determine film coating thickness and quality. Product and Process Development Freiburg by chance became aware of a small company located in Dettingen/Teck, Germany (www.quality-analysis.de) that just had entered the business providing CT analysis for the industry. We were very interested in the capabilities of this technology. This coincided with the need to determine film-coating thickness of one of our development projects where the active ingredient is sensitive to light and therefore the tablets have a light-protecting film coating. Although CT initially was not considered suitable to be used for determination of layer thicknesses that thin we believed in the power of the technology and the agility of the small CT company. Excited about the challenge to measure film layers in the micrometer range the CT method was further developed and the software optimized to interpret the data. Thus, it was finally feasible to perform accurate measurement and achieve meaningful results. And the results – especially the three-dimensional images – were so impressive.

Cross section of a film-coated tablet (CT image by courtesy of quality analysis)

3D image of film-coating layer (by courtesy of quality analysis)

In fact, the software allows you to virtually dive into a film-coated tablet, scan through it layer by layer. By smart data handling one can display the film-coat alone that looks like an eggshell; the tablet core virtually disappears. Film thickness at multiple locations can be measured and displayed by using different colours according to the related thickness. Thus, it was feasible to distinguish between various amounts of film coat applied. And there are many more applications of computer tomography for characterization of solid dosages forms. We are just entering a new era.