Slow Down Before You Hurt Someone

As the father of three young adult men, I recall my anxiety when they started driving. If you have been through this you know what I am talking about.

Young male drivers tend to go too fast. On one occasion, after pleading with one of my sons to slow down, I finally raised my voice and said. "Slow down! Let me see you drive as if you are a senior citizen." It worked.

In business, there is the constant push to go faster. To accelerate market entry. To get ahead of the competition. To skip the test market and launch. To fix a problem. And so on. The need for speed is only magnified if you are facing a quarter to quarter performance mentality. Make the future come alive now -- why go 100 kilometers an hour when the car is built for 260?

But with speed comes risk. A business should not move faster than its ability to manage the associated risks. Or, it may be unprepared for an unexpected curve, to stick with the driving analogy.

Take the example of Pfizer, the world's largest drug maker. Its 3rd quarter profit fell 77 percent due to the expense of discontinuing its inhaled insulin treatment Exubera. The write-off for Exubera is $2.8 billion.

Pfizer faces slowing growth ahead due to competition from generic alternatives and a lack of blockbuster drugs in its pipeline. Pfizer CEO, Jeffrey Kindler, has said there are no silver bullets or quick fixes to this problem. But it appears that Exubera was intended to be just that.

Exubera, once expected to be a $1-2 billion drug, was rushed to market in early 2006. It failed to catch on with doctors or patients due to concerns about safety, inconvenience and cost. First year sales of Exubera were less than $15 million.

Of course, Pfizer must adopt a sense of urgency and take the steps to rebuild its pipeline. I am not suggesting that it operate with a business as usual mentality. But in the case of Exubera, Pfizer moved so fast that it was unable to fully assess both the opportunity AND and the risk. It finds itself in reverse rather than fifth gear.

Sometimes it pays to slow down.