Market Knowledge and Stakeholder Considerations for the Biopharmaceutics Sector: Incorporating User Value and Societal Needs in Therapeutic Interventions

Purpose: Many health systems are considered ill-equipped to adequately meet future demand. Although academic entrepreneurs and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) drive health technology innovation, they often suboptimally consider important market and stakeholder requirements. This can result in missed opportunities to improve health system performance, address demand-supply gaps, and achieve financial rewards. Market intelligence can provide crucial information in this regard, but scientifically sourced guidance on how to perform market research for biopharmaceutics is scarce. Our objective was, therefore, to create and provide an easily accessible biopharmaceutics market research toolbox that can be perused by academic entrepreneurs and SMEs to improve the alignment of their developments with stakeholder needs. Design: Guided by market orientation theory, we interviewed senior managers and commercialisation experts from the biopharmaceutics sector. We asked them which information they consider most relevant, and how they collect, analyse and respond to new information to align product features, positioning and stakeholder-relationship management with market needs. Findings: Our innovator toolbox consists of a high-level overview of market intelligence considerations mapped against a novel innovation framework, a stakeholder reasoning and value model, and detailed considerations (checklists) per stakeholder of biopharmaceutics interventions. Originality: We provide here the first market orientation-based overview of market intelligence considerations for the biopharmaceutics sector. Although primarily collated for academic entrepreneurs and SMEs, our innovator toolbox for the biopharmaceutics sector can help all stakeholders better understand their orientation towards markets.