As Take­da ab­sorbs Shire’s R&D ops, the fo­cus is on re­plac­ing a cen­tral­ized com­mand mod­el with a ‘light touch’ in a re­struc­tured glob­al or­ga­ni­za­tion

At Take­da, one of the top pri­or­i­ties in the R&D group since the $62 bil­lion ac­qui­si­tion of Shire closed at the be­gin­ning of the year has been cen­tered on cre­at­ing a shared cul­ture — and that calls for some group ac­tiv­i­ties.

Six weeks af­ter the deal closed, Take­da’s top brass brought to­geth­er 150 re­search group chiefs in San Diego to start the process. And they were back to­geth­er again last week to re­view the progress to date.

“Shire was work­ing much more in a cen­tral­ized mod­el,” where a group work­ing with CEO Flem­ming Orn­skov called the shots, says Geor­gia Ker­esty.

Ker­esty was hired away from J&J as R&D COO just months be­fore the deal was an­nounced in 2018. It was a com­plete sur­prise, with a chal­lenge of a life­time built in.

Shire’s op­er­at­ing mod­el was “very, very dif­fer­ent” from the Take­da way, she says, where the em­pha­sis un­der R&D chief Andy Plump has been on a “light touch,” em­pow­er­ing teams in a de­cen­tral­ized fash­ion.

“For R&D the goal was to get us back to do what we do every­day,” says Ker­esty, “to de­vel­op prod­ucts.”

I talked to Ker­esty about her work over H1. While Plump, an ar­tic­u­late cham­pi­on of the com­pa­ny’s re­search or­ga­ni­za­tion in the more than 4 years he’s been R&D chief un­der CEO Christophe We­ber, has plen­ty of say about the or­ga­ni­za­tion they’re cre­at­ing, it’s Ker­esty’s role to man­age the nit­ty-grit­ty work in ham­mer­ing out the new struc­ture. Defin­ing suc­cess in a “trans­for­ma­tive” merg­er like this is one thing, but mak­ing it hap­pen — get­ting the pieces to fit to­geth­er — is some­thing else. And there are few chal­lenges big­ger than bring­ing two R&D or­ga­ni­za­tions with wide­ly dis­parate or­ga­ni­za­tions to­geth­er in­to one.

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