[PRINCIPLES]
Seven things we believe
that shape how we work.
Behavioural design thinking isn't a methodology we licensed. It's a set of convictions built from twenty-five years of watching pharma strategy succeed and fail, and noticing the patterns.
The seven convictions behind the method.
[WHAT WE BELIEVE]
[01]
Behaviour is the unit of strategy.
Not awareness, not attitude, not intent. The thing you're trying to change is a behaviour. Prescribing, switching, adhering, referring, prioritising. Every other output is only valuable to the extent that it moves a specific behaviour in a specific group of people. If you can't name the behaviour, you haven't finished the strategy.
[02]
What people say and what they do are not the same data.
This is the single most useful thing behavioural science has given the world, and the single most under-applied insight in pharma. Focus groups, interviews, advisory boards all measure what people will say in the presence of a researcher. Prescription data, EHR logs, actual clinical conversations measure what they do. Where the two diverge, the behaviour wins every time.
[03]
Friction is cheaper than persuasion.
Most pharma effort goes into persuading HCPs or patients to do something. Most behavioural research suggests that removing friction from the desired behaviour, making it easier, more default, more socially visible, works better than trying to change minds. Ask where the friction is before asking how to convince anyone.
[04]
Context beats character.
The same HCP behaves differently in a twelve-minute consultation than in a thirty-minute one. The same patient behaves differently in a pharmacy with a queue than without one. Strategy that targets the kind of person under-performs strategy that targets the kind of moment. We design against context, not against segments.
[05]
Short sprints beat long projects.
A three-day sprint with the right people in the room produces better strategic output than a six-month consulting engagement. Partly because timeboxed work forces clarity. Mostly because the people who actually run the brand are in the room from the start, so the output is already theirs by the time the sprint ends.
[06]
Misalignment is almost always about assumptions, not opinions.
When medical, commercial, and access disagree, the argument looks like a difference of opinion. It's almost always a difference in unstated beliefs about how the customer decides. Surface the assumptions, test them against evidence, and the argument resolves.
[07]
A strategy you can't act on isn't a strategy.
The test of a good strategy isn't how well it reads on a slide. It's whether a field rep, a brand manager, a market access lead, and a medical affairs manager can all tell you the same three things they should be doing differently on Monday.
[WHAT THIS MEANS IN PRACTICE]
Principles aren't the product. The work is.
Every engagement we run, strategy sprint, innovation session, journey mapping, team alignment, is a different application of the same seven principles. The method varies. The underlying conviction doesn't. If these principles feel like how you already want to work but can't, that's a good reason to have a conversation.
[LET'S TALK]