My company develops, manufactures, and markets specialty and generic injectable pharmaceuticals and medication-delivery systems. About three years ago, we spun off from Abbott Laboratories to become an independent, publicly traded company. Yet to survive and thrive as a separate entity, we had to look at every area of business and make changes to ensure sustainability.

To position our firm for near and long-term success, we needed to spur growth by reinvesting in our business — primarily by revitalizing our R&D pipeline and shortening product-development cycles. To address these areas, we transformed our practices by breaking down barriers to foster cross-functional collaboration and streamline processes. In other words, we simplified.

Simplification can't come without some structure, however. To that end, we created two new internal structures, the Hospira Product Review Committee (HPRC) and Fast Abbreviated New Drug Application Submission Time (FAST), to better align new product development across R&D, manufacturing, regulatory and medical affairs, quality assurance, finance, and commercial areas.

While this sounds like business basics, the simple truth is it wasn't happening at Hospira. And as a new company, we knew we needed to maximize our resources and execution or we would fail.

The company today enjoys improved time to market and an increase in new products generated without compromising the quality of our development work. Here's why I think the HPRC and FAST helped us:

It broke down the silos

Prior to our transformation, products were essentially conceived in R&D then handed off to manufacturing, marketing, and so on. So, while it's a painfully simple concept, we first realigned R&D with the business. Within the HPRC, each functional group has a seat at the table. Now, every piece of the business is aware of what the others are doing. This helps us solve problems, work more effectively together, and most importantly, incorporate the voice of the customer. This helped focus our efforts on unmet customer needs.

It empowered the group

To speed the process, HPRC is formed of senior officials with decision-making authority for their respective units. Monthly meetings are slated as “can't miss” appointments and are forums for action. As a result, informed decisions can be made at the table — rapidly — and reflect input from each area of the business.

It reworked planning

In the past, Hospira conducted new product planning toward the end of the year. This meant promising product ideas sometimes had to wait several months before they could be reviewed for potential funding, which ultimately delayed time to market. With the HPRC structure, we can review new ideas and adjust our approach year-round.

It turbocharged our go-to-market approach

Development was originally comprised of hundreds of procedures and checkpoints. With another cross-functional team, we developed FAST, which shortened administration times and the internal checkpoints needed to bring a drug safely to market.

Like HPRC, FAST is rooted in collaboration and streamlining. It focuses on reducing the internal administration clogging the flow of the product pipeline, introducing concurrent work rather than a straight linear path, and rewarding employees for results, quality, and performance. All simple actions, but fundamentals that weren't happening before.

Deploying FAST let us shrink our average time to market from 24 to 16 months, and without spending extra funds. And we continue to shave weeks, if not months, off of the total process. Boosting productivity also let us increase our number of active projects by more than 35%.

Prior to the spin-off, our processes were separate, complex, and linear. Our pipeline was populated with just a handful of products, and our productivity and margins were among the lowest in the industry. Thanks to simple changes and a lot of hard work, by the end of 2004 we had 36 generic drugs in our pipeline. By the end of 2005, we had 46. Today our pipeline remains full, and more importantly, we're bringing drugs to market faster than ever before.

We've applied these same principles outside of pharmaceuticals, and made strong strides in medication-management devices. Since the spin-off, we've launched five infusion products, more than we introduced in the prior 10 years alone. We've increased our R&D budget in double-digit increments and built a strong pipeline that will deliver a steady stream of needed products.