Eli Lilly and Company: Innovation in Diabetes Care

Eli Lilly and Company has success in produce and sells insulin in the United States in 1923 and in 1995 Eli Lilly has dominated the world insulin market with another company. But Eli Lilly has miss some of its’ opportunity in diabetes care when it trying to sell its’ product to the world. What went wrong with Eli Lilly during that time?

Lilly's Company Mistakes

Here are few points. First of all, Lilly has trying hard to improve their product. But as the case mentions when Lilly’s “Match” product come out, it become a rival commodities to Lilly’s own old product.

When it comes to product life cycle, it true that company needs to put out new product before the old product become less revenue but in this situation for Eli Lilly is different. Because of the market rate it hold in US diabetes care market is around 80% and the new product will definitely hurt the revenue the old product produce.

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So Eli Lilly actually decided not to put it on to the market. It was not a clever idea of choosing to thinking of its’ revenue instead of customer need. And when it comes to asking the customer what they need. Eli Lilly asked the wrong customer. Instead of asking the people who are actually using diabetes care product, Eli Lilly went into doctor. What the doctor wants is totally opposite from what the patient need, the doctor want the customer come to them regularly because that’s the way that doctor earn money from.

But patient or customers want to be able to control it by themselves. When Eli Lilly targeted wrong customer it eventually hurt its’ revenue. Nova is considering the main competitor for Eli Lilly.

Nova vs Eli Lilly

But both two companies put up similar product into market. They try to put out the newest product in order to attract more customers and gain more profit from it. But does the customer really need those newest products. It becomes the question between should the product be consumers-demand trajectory or technology-performance trajectory. In this case, the answer would probably consumers-demand trajectory. Even though two companies put out good product but the customer used to the product they already have. And the customer are sensitive to the price since those products are using only few times and need to be change all the time.

Even though there are some parts that Eli Lilly fail on it but it try hard to understand what their customer really need. Eli Lilly found out that
customer would willing to use their new product if they did some change to it such as more easy for customers to using new product or using other technology instead of need to inject. And more important is that Eli Lilly found out that most of their customers don’t have enough of information about diabetes care. So Eli Lilly set up an Controlled Diabetes Services program (CDS) which educating people and building a community of patients the value of their insulin therapy.

I think Eli Lilly made a good decision about setting up CDS which can indirectly understand what their customers need and allow more people have more opportunity to get to know their product and use their product. Focusing on know their customer and educating their customer will let more and more people know their new product and form a habit of using their new product. If CDS successfully then Eli Lilly new product such as Match and Insulin pens will have less problem when it sales on the market.

Instead of keep on compete with similar product on the market, Eli Lilly should look for new opportunities. Eli Lilly should ask their customers what their value for the product, how they use it to find out the need for customer. Also Eli Lilly need to protect their current market. In pharmaceutical industry, once you lost a customer, it will be harder to get that customer back. When customers change to other medicine, it will take customer time to get used to the new medicine and once customer used to the new medicine. They will gain royal to it because of changing cost and troubles it might occur.

Even Eli Lilly have miss some opportunities in diabetes care market but its’ trying to using the resources and new product to regain their advantage to the diabetes care market for example the CDS program will definitely gain revenue, new customer and open new market for it. But beside CDS program, it would have to put up more products. And I do think that compare to technology-performance trajectory, Eli Lilly should go with consumers-demand trajectory. Since of the technology-performance trajectory competitive is strong and it could not earn more profit from it. By changing to consumers-demand trajectory will give it more choose and opportunities.