Innovations is born in 1996 from the merger of two pharmaceutical companies: Sandal and Cuba-Edgy. Edgy was in 1758 and Cuba in 1859; both are Swiss companies founded in Basel. In 1970, Cuba an Edgy merged and formed Cuba Edgy. Sandal was created in Switzerland in 1886 by Alfred Kern and Detoured Sandal. Sandal is currently the brand of the generic division of Innovations. Innovations is born from the merger of Swiss companies, the cultural background is, of course, mainly Swiss. Moreover, if we consider the start of the Edgy Company, Innovations is 255 years old.
Innovations is built upon a Swiss culture, over, diversity within the company is really strong. According Diversity, Innovations is ranked NO 13 in the 2012 Diversity Top 50 Companies for Diversity. Indeed, Innovations has always made important efforts to encourage the cultural diversity. Hence, diversity management within the company has to be operated. However, diversity implies not only different cultures. In fact, diversity also take into account the openness of the company concerning the ratios of women/men that are working for Innovations, the age diversity, etc.
According to And© Ways (Innovations President), the Innovations Business ‘touches the lives of patients every ay. We believe that the diversity of our workforce and our inclusive, high- performing, team-based culture drives sustained business success?through innovation, diversity of experiences and thoughts?sparking collaboration, generating ever stronger customer connections and ultimately making better decisions. “. Innovations’ industry: portfolio and mission The company is focused on providing healthcare solutions that fulfill the patients’ and societies’ needs worldwide.
Nowadays, the healthcare environment is changing really fast and Innovations tries to face the major challenges due to those changes. Indeed, the changes in lifestyles lead to new degenerative and chronic diseases (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, Diabetes, Listener’s… ). Moreover, the world’s population is in constant growth, the population is getting older and older (more than 2 billion seniors in 2050) and new needs are developed. The emerging countries have more and more access to healthcare products while the poorest countries are still lacking of basic treatments and medicines…
Because of all those changes, Innovations is facing major challenges. The company mission is to innovate and bring continuously new treatments and urges to patients all over the world. Innovations is organized into several divisions: the pharmaceuticals, Alcoa, Sandal, Consumer Health and Vaccines and Diagnostics. A) Pharmaceuticals This Innovations division concerns the primary care (hypertension, respiratory, metabolism,… ), the oncology, and all specialties (ophthalmic, neuroscience, critical cares, integrated hospital cares,… ).
This division is essentially focused on innovation and the development of new products and the development of existing products. Alcoa Alcoa is owned by Innovations since 2010. It is the world leader on the eye care market. Alcoa is offering surgical products, vision care and ophthalmic pharmaceuticals for people of all ages. Alcoa invests over $5 billion each year in its R&D department. This allows the innovation of new treatments and eye diseases (glaucoma, cataracts’ diseases, ocular allergies, etc. ). Sandal Sandal is the Innovations’ division of the bookmobiles and generic medicines.
Those products are the alternatives to other existing medicines and biologic. Moreover, those products are less expensive for the final consumer. Sandal is own more than 50% of the bookmobiles’ market in Europe, Australia, North America and Japan. Consumer health The consumer health division of Innovations is divided into two majors subdivisions: Over The Counter (ETC) and Animal Health. The subdivision Over The Counter is the leader on the world consumer healthcare products (essentially self- medication products).
The animal health subdivision is, as its name indicates, focused on products for animals. Vaccines and Diagnostics Innovations’ division of vaccines and diagnostics is designed to prevent vaccines, but also tools and software that allow the screening of blood and the detection of diseases. Vaccines are elaborated by Innovations in order to help people to be in DOD health. The major vaccines offered by Innovations are against: polio, tetanus, whooping cough, etc. The Innovations diagnostics subdivision is offering tools that allow professionals to screen blood in order to identify pathogens (HIVE, hepatitis, etc.
The Innovations’ intercultural characteristics The particularity of Innovations concerning the intercultural characteristics is that the company has been built upon the merger of two companies. Moreover, those companies (Cuba-Edgy and Sandal) are both coming from Switzerland. Nevertheless, Sandal were operating more in the USA than in Switzerland. Hence, Innovations is a Swiss company with a background coming from Switzerland. However, Innovations is a global company that is present in more than 140 countries in the whole world.
Because of that, the pharmaceutical company has to deal with issues of each specific countries and cultures. Indeed, Innovations has its headquarter in Switzerland but it has several subsidiaries all over the world. The intercultural context of Innovations The major explication of the Innovations intercultural context is linked to the creation of the company. Indeed, Innovations has been built thanks to the Cuba- Edgy and Sandal merger. Despite those companies were both coming from Switzerland, they did not have the same corporate culture.
Employees of both companies had to adapt themselves to the new company that had to create a completely new corporate culture, based upon the previous cultures of the Sandal and Cuba-Edgy companies. In the same time, Innovations has built its culture upon agreements, mergers and acquisitions of other companies after its creation.
Agreement with the University of California Berkeley – 1998 After the merger, the newly formed company signed an agreement with the University of Berkeley in 1998. This agreement concerned the Institute of Agricultural Discovery of Innovations and the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology of Berkeley. This agreement was made in order to develop the academic literature on industry-university relations, but also to share data in order to compare them between each organization.
Creation of Agents – 2000 Agents is born in November 2000, from the merger of the agricultural divisions of two major pharmaceutical companies: Innovations and Austereness. From this merger, Agents is a new group that is only focusing on agribusiness. Because Austereness is born in 1999 from the merger of a Swedish (Star ABA) and a British many (Seneca Group), its identity is strongly different from the Innovations’ one. Gayness’s name come from “Sync” like “synergy” and “agent” comes from the Latin word “gene”; its means people/community. Hence Agents is the perfect creation built upon companies from different cultures.
Acquisition of Leek Pharmaceuticals – 2002 In 2002, Leek pharmaceuticals has been bought by Innovations. Currently, Leek is a part of Sandal because it concerns generic medicines. This purchase allowed Innovations to increase its portfolio of generic medicines and to develop its network in the world. Indeed, Leek pharmaceuticals is a Slovenian company created in 1946. )
Creation of the Innovations Institutes for BioMedical research – 2002 Innovations has created in 2002 the “Innovations Institutes for Biomedical research”. Innovations based center in the USA essentially, in J, in Italy but also in China and in Indonesia. Some centers are specialized in specific topics. For example, in Singapore, the specific topic is about tropical diseases, and the Italian center is focused on vaccines. Projects have also been agreed with MIT and Harvard. In 2009, Innovations decided ton invest $1 billion to build the largest pharmaceutical institute of R&D in China. )
Acquisition of Denim – 2003 Denim is a partner of Innovations since 2003 thanks to the acquisition by Innovations of 51% of Denim Pharmaceuticals. The transaction was about $225 million. Denim is based in the USA. The two companies are working together on the centralization of certain drug candidates.
Acquisition of Durance – 2004 Durance has been acquired by Sandal in 2004. Durance is the generic unit of Cetaceans (I-J) based in Denmark. Durance is the Danish leader on the generic medicines market. Hence, Sandal (Innovations’ generics unit) can increase its network within the Nordic countries and increase its development of products thanks to the logistic facilities provided by the agreement.
Acquisition of Hexane GAG – 2005 The acquisition of Hexane in 2005 is also link to the development of the generics unit of Innovations. Indeed, thanks to the acquisition for $8. 3 billion, Innovations became the biggest generic medicines company. In fact, Hexane was the fourth suggest generic dressmaker. ) Acquisition of Alcoa – 2008 Alcoa is one of the biggest US eye-care company. The first step of the acquisition was made in 2008 with the investment of $12. 9 billion. The takeover has been completed in 2010 for $41 billion. Innovations now owns 77% of Alcoa.
Acquisition of Jagging Tunisian Bio-Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. – 2009 In 2009, Innovations acquired 85% of the Chinese company: Jagging Tunisian Bio- Pharmaceutical. This acquisition has been made by Innovations in order to develop its presence on the Chinese territory. The Chinese company is specialized in vaccines. Indeed, Innovations and Jagging Tunisian are working on the development of their common portfolio and to the expansion of their common capabilities.
Acquisition of Foggier Pharmaceuticals – 2012 In July 2012, Sandal (generic unit of Innovations) acquired Foggier Pharmaceuticals for $1. 53 billion. The implantation of Foggier in Princeton (New-jersey) allows Innovations to develop its presence of the US market. Intercultural challenges within Innovations .The Innovations’ intercultural challenges. The major issue for a company such a Innovations is to get approvals for each product that is created by the company.
Indeed, because it is a medical concern, pharmaceutical companies have to get approvals before launching their products. Moreover, countries do not have the same laws and regulation concerning some products. Because of that, some products are authorized in some countries and they are not in some others. In the same time, pharmaceutical companies such as Innovations have to file patents for their researches. Patents have to be filed in every country in order to be secured. In some countries it is particularly difficult to file them. In Innovations, with more than 140 locations, employees are coming from very efferent cultures.
It is necessary to understand cultural differences in order to develop a good management style that is appropriate to every culture and to cultural diversity. Innovations has its headquarter in Basel – Switzerland. People from many different culture are working in the headquarter: Swiss people, French people, Germans, Italians, and from other countries of all over the world. Indeed, doctors and professors are coming to work for such companies from the entire world. The headquarter of Innovations is called “Innovation Campus Basel”. More than 7,000 employees are working everyday on the campus.
The campus is designed to increase the productiveness thanks the well-being of all employees. Indeed, creativity, communication and collaboration are favored thanks to the new campus. The R&D centers are based in different part of the world with very diverse culture: Switzerland (Basel), India (Hydrated), China (Shanghai) and in the USA (Cambridge). Innovations is promoting cultural diversity within its employees because the company’s leaders think that because Innovations is devoted to people of the whole world, people that are serving them need to reflect the diversity.
Moreover, Innovations is of buying companies based in different countries in order to increase its network and to be the leader on each sector in which Innovations is operating. Those purchases and mergers are the direct consequence of the world of globalization in which Innovations has been developed. Indeed, globalization of business does not involve national boundaries and due to that global economy, people have to collaborate in teams that are cross-cultural and without any geographical boundaries.
Innovations’ intercultural issues Since its creation, Innovations had to face intercultural issues and to take steps to eel with them.
The creation of Innovations Innovations is a perfectly new creation based upon the merger of two companies coming from Switzerland. This type of M&A is not common. However, Innovations had to face the fact that even if both company were coming from Switzerland, the largest portion of Cuba-Juices pharmaceutical business was operated in the USA. Hence, even though this merger could have appeared as a domestic merger, the management of it had to be global.
In order to build a completely new company, Innovations had to develop the commitment of every employee for the new organization. Indeed, the company identity is new and its culture too. The corporate culture had to be built and people had to deal with it. Due to that, Innovations had to “rebuild the employee trust, and establish HRS policies and practices that were considered just and fair”. Due to that, many employees had to transferred and now, several nationalities are leading to multicultural teams. This phenomenon (employing multicultural workforce) is not uncommon.
Innovations had to deal with the diverse teams coming from different countries. The management of Innovations had to be global in order to create value. Patents’ law in India – 2006/2012 The Indian law prohibited the development of generic medicines. Generics are based on medicines that have been patented. When the patent expires, generics can be launched. In fact, India refused to recognize the patent of an existing medicine if there is a modified formula resulting in a re-patent of the medicine. Due to that, Indian people do not have access to affordable medicines.
In 2006, Innovations was in court in order to avoid that other companies can “copy’ their medicines. Innovations lost. In 2012, the company is back in court in order to postpone the right of the Indian companies to copy medicines. This has been considered as unfair for Indian people by Sofas international (confederation that tries to find solutions to poverty and injustice at the international level). Purchases of companies and mergers Innovations is regularly buying other companies or merging with them. This strategy of alliance is a part of globalization in order to enter new markets or to develop them.
Just like for the creation of the company, Innovations had to develop the employees’ trust within each organization. According to Whitney (1994), trust is a very important parameter for the organization’s efficiency, effectiveness and performance. In the same time, trust is linked to justice. Indeed, if the company is not fair, it will not be considered as being trustful. Recommendations According to me, I would recommend Innovations to continue to develop its network in the whole world thanks to the acquisition of foreign companies, or through agreements and partnerships with such companies.
However, it will be necessary for Innovations to take care of all the intercultural challenges that will be faced due to those acquisitions, partnerships and other types of agreements. In the same time, Innovations should give more attention on the image of the company in the efferent cultures. Indeed, the case known in India does not give a good image of Innovations and that may disturb the trust of people for the Swiss company. Moreover, this issue may influence people to reject the company.
I would also recommend Innovations to continue to take into account the cultural differences known within multicultural teams, but also within companies managed in foreign countries. I think that until now, Innovations has well managed those types of relations, but Innovations should not rest on its laurels and do not take thing for granted. Indeed, Innovations should be careful of not loosing the good ways of management for cross-cultural teal across the Swiss boundaries. Conclusion Finally, as a conclusion, Innovations has been built through the merger of Cuba- Edgy and Sandal, two Swiss companies.
Indeed, Innovations is a Swiss company with a cultural background based upon the Swiss culture. However, each company was strongly implicated in different countries of the world. In the context of globalization, Innovations has implemented its network; its efficiency, effectiveness and performance thanks to several alliances, agreements, mergers and acquisition between its creation in 1996 and 2012. For the future, we can expect Innovations to continue to develop itself thanks to such alliances and acquisitions. Innovations has quite well managed the cultural challenges faced after having acquired or signed an agreement with a foreign company.
