Bertrand Bodson in front of green Background

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Passion for data

Chief Digital Officer Bertrand Bodson talks about the potential of data and digital technologies to transform the pharmaceutical sector.

The interview was conducted by Goran Mijuk

Bertrand Bodson with colleagues in Japan.

When Bertrand Bodson was named Chief Digital Officer, the appointment signaled a sea change at Novartis. With the creation of the new role, the aim was not only to spur on data and digital projects across the organization and put them under a single, coordinating roof. The goal was also to embed innovative technologies across all divisions and functions and create a mindset in which new data and digital tools would become as commonplace as analog tools in the past.

That Novartis picked the 45-year-old Belgian national, who was an outsider to the pharmaceuticals industry, was no accident – although it did mean that the former Amazon manager had some convincing to do within the company and had to “take classes like crazy” to catch up with the scientific side of the business.

But Bodson was used to such challenges. After completing his MBA at Harvard, he did not choose the obvious path to join the GEs of this world and go for prestige and a padded lifestyle. He opted instead to join Amazon, which back around the turn of the millennium was a promising, yet fledgling enterprise that was essentially selling books online.

Spurred on by a “sense of adventure” and a “gut feeling” that he was participating in something big, he helped shape Amazon into the digital disruptor that it has since become. “We got to do a variety of things, from business development to finance to launching new products, new product lines.”

The years at Amazon were not just “great” in that they allowed Bodson to experiment with new things and be at the forefront of digital innovation. During his time at Amazon, Bodson came to appreciate taking a customer-centric perspective and learned to develop a long-term view, values that helped him set up his own business in 2006.

Known as bragster.com, which he formed with former investment banker Wim Vernaeve, Bodson created a social media platform in which fans would dare each other to do funny stunts, quickly generating a hard-boiled community of pranksters.

Reflecting Bodson’s ease at going with the flow and not always taking himself too seriously, he also once accepted a community challenge to show up as a blue gorilla, bragster.com’s logo, on the widely televised X-Factor show in Britain. Although he was smashed by judge Simon Cowell for his limited showbiz talent, Bodson won the 1000-pound challenge and the hearts of the bragster community.

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Going big on data and digital.

After his success with the social media platform, Bodson joined the music industry and then retail to help companies such as EMI Music and Argos digitize their business. EMI Music, which had brought The Beatles, Queen, Pink Floyd and Maria Callas to millions of listeners, digitized 50 percent of its business under Bodson’s leadership.

At Argos, which was a traditional catalog retailer that had virtually no online presence or digital expertise, Bodson helped the struggling company grow into a digital leader within less than five years. Today, as part of retailer Sainsbury’s, Argos attracts around a billion customer visits to its website and only trails Amazon and eBay in the UK.

Almost out of the blue, he then joined Novartis. “It was a bit of a risk, quite a departure from what I was doing before,” Bodson says about his decision to join the pharmaceuticals industry. “The alternative would have been to go and run the next retailer in the UK.”

But he was attracted to pharma. “There is something special about this place. You can sense it when you walk around the Campus in Basel and elsewhere. There is that sense of purpose that is obvious everywhere. That was part of the fascination and decision to join Novartis. There is also this sense of scale. What you do matters.”

This deep-rooted feeling of purpose has remained with Bodson since he started working at the company. Although he says that he has had to learn quite a bit since joining Novartis, he is convinced that the digital transformation of the pharmaceuticals industry will gain pace and that it will have an impact on the industry’s business model in future – as it has done in other industries.

But there is no reason to fear this change, he says. Rather, Bodson is convinced that people should embrace the transformation, develop “a passion for data” and look for ways in which data and digital technologies can transform Novartis in making processes more efficient, boosting the speed of drug launches and accelerating drug research and development.

Despite an uphill struggle when it comes to cleaning data to make them machine-readable, for example, Bodson believes Novartis is ready to take on the challenge and be among the leaders of the field. As Novartis has embarked on a large-scale transformation to become a leading medicines company powered by data and digital under the leadership of Vas Narasimhan, Bodson is ready to speed up the digitization of another analog giant.

Bertrand Bodson (right) and Steven Baert test new VR goggles.

When you joined Novartis, you were already a senior figure in the digital industry, but had no prior experience in pharma. What drove you to jump ship and move to this new world in which data and digital were not yet a priority?

There are many reasons why I was attracted to join the pharmaceuticals industry. Besides the strong sense of purpose that drives associates to research and develop innovative and life-changing drugs as well as my own sense of adventure, I felt it was a fantastic time to join an industry that is ripe for digital transformation.

What is driving this change?

Digital science has made huge leaps over the past two decades. Tremendously powerful computers, the development of innovative algorithms and breakthroughs in the area of artificial intelligence allow scientists to tackle problems today that seemed out of reach only a few years ago. This has opened up tremendous new opportunities, attracting digital leaders such as Google, Amazon and Microsoft to move into the healthcare space. New companies are working on the convergence of data, classical science and medicine. I found this fascinating. I also clearly felt that Novartis – under the leadership of Joerg Reinhardt and Vas Narasimhan – wanted to go big on data and digital. This was very attractive and sort of a chance of a lifetime.

How would you describe your journey so far?

From an operational perspective, I think we have probably gone even beyond what we were hoping for. Since I joined Novartis at the beginning of 2018, we have launched

12 lighthouse projects that are essential to help us improve our ability to innovate, operate and engage with our stakeholders, including patients, doctors and customers, and pave the way for an all-encompassing digitization of Novartis.

Where do we stand with these projects?

We are still early in this development. Some ventures are more advanced than others, which is natural and is usually linked to the complexity of the underlying task. But we are making progress and have set up strong teams over the past few quarters. The backing from the leadership team is also strong. Without the support of Jay Bradner and John Tsai, for example, data42 would not be possible. The same holds true for our AI-driven sales support program ACTalya, which is also receiving strong impetus from Susanne Schaffert and Marie-France Tschudin, to highlight another example.

How would you describe your personal experience at Novartis so far?

Coming from the digital industry, I am naturally impatient and prefer quick results. At Novartis, however, I was confronted with a complexity that requires much more patience, stamina and endurance. The digital transformation is not only about digitizing analog processes. It’s about finding new ways to marry data and science. It is incredibly hard.

What lessons have you learned?

Sometimes I wish I could be a physician. Not in order to be credible but to have a better understanding and ask the questions that really matter to get to the heart of a problem. Another important lesson learned has been to resist the hype around AI and not oversell its possibilities. Vas has been incredibly helpful in this. We must be clear that AI is not a magic wand that will allow us to produce new drugs just like putting a coin in a slot machine and then – hey presto! – you find a drug. We need to ask the right scientific questions and structure the data to get the right answers. This is incredibly hard and difficult work. But eventually it will help us reduce costs and shorten the timeframe to research and develop new drugs.

As part of the digital transformation, you have set four priorities. Besides the lighthouse projects, one goal is to make Novartis digital. Can you expand on this?

This is really also a cultural journey. We want to mobilize associates to embrace the digital transformation and build data science capabilities. For this reason, we have created the One Digital platform, which helps pool our digital activities and allows associates to learn from each other. At the same time, we also have a dedicated leadership capability program in place that will be instrumental in effecting this change of mindset.

Another pillar of your strategy is to become the number one partner for the tech ecosystem.

As a science-based pharmaceuticals company, our expertise is medical science. Although we already have more than 1000 data scientists across the company today, we need to work with the best and most agile partners in the world to make progress. Among other things, we have entered into partnerships with Oxford’s Big Data Institute and have set up the Biome platform to work with start-ups in enhancing our capabilities and to fast-track our development. More recently, we expanded our partnership with Tencent and also started a collaboration with Amazon Web Services.

Bertrand Bodson with his team during the company’s Community Partnership Day.

Your fourth priority is to pursue bolder moves. Why?

The digital transformation is a reality. Many industries – and this is my first-hand experience – have tried to sit out the digital transformation only to learn that this attitude was wrong. In pursuing bold moves, we are trying to become disruptors ourselves, rather than being disrupted.

Can you name an example?

Our partnership with Tencent in China, for example, is one such move through which we aim to redefine how we use social media and artificial intelligence to improve the management of chronic diseases. Our recent agreement with Microsoft to create an AI innovation lab can also be seen in this light. Of course, such bold moves are risky. But this is nothing new to Novartis. It is part of the DNA of the company to seek unconventional avenues and push the frontiers of science. This has been done time and again, and has led to great medical breakthroughs in areas such as oncology and cardiovascular therapy. Now we are also entering a new phase in which we are pursuing gene therapy, another courageous step. As far as failures are concerned, these are part of the process. We should also not underestimate the important lessons we have learned from our partnership with Google and others. These will help us in the future.

Where do you see the biggest challenges so far?

There are a great many challenges, of course. The digital transformation is not a simple thing. Like the computerization of the economy in the past, AI and other digital tools will become general-purpose technologies and will transform all aspects of the economy, including our industry. But it will only come with hard work, such as preparing the data in order for machines to read it and creating algorithms that can extract new knowledge and help us speed up the R&D process. This requires not only digital and data know-how but a deep understanding of the science. People who can bring both areas of expertise to the table are rare. So we all need to learn and be curious as to how we can bring these two worlds together in order to boost innovation and live up to our mission to improve and extend people’s lives.

How has the coronavirus crisis affected your work?

Even two years ago – when I joined Novartis – data, science and technology were starting to converge and the healthcare industry was ripe for disruption. Without a doubt, the pandemic has accelerated the pace and scale of this hugely. COVID-19 certainly forced us to pause, reflect and challenge ourselves – and it has shown that we can push boundaries because patients, physicians and regulators are expecting us to. They need us to. When it can take 12 years and $2.5b to get a new drug to market, we need to explore how we can better use data and digital to speed this up.

What’s your vision for Novartis and the healthcare sector?

Data and digital will create new realities which today may seem unfamiliar and strange. In future, patients will take much more responsibility in deciding which drugs they take and which data and digital tools will help them make these decisions. R&D efforts will be assisted by intelligent digital technologies, allowing us to produce effective therapies in less time. These changes will not come overnight and require a lot of diligence. But if we embrace the change and create a passion for data, we will not only be able to react to the transformation but will also be able to shape the future of healthcare ourselves.

More information:

Talent report – A powerful pairing (PDF)

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Miriam Donaldson, Head of HR Global Digital Function

31.05.2020

Digital leaders

The faces behind the digital transformation at Novartis.

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