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Should we believe the experts in business?
In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell offered his telephone patent to Western Union, the largest telegraph company in America, for $100,000. A c

According to USFDA, a combination product is one composed of any combination of a drug and device; biological product and device; drug and biological product

ommittee of experts was convened to decide on the company’s interest in the new technology. The decision was clear.

“Bell’s profession is that of a voice teacher … yet he claims to ha

; or drug, device, and biological product and fixed dose combination would include two or more combinations of drug.

Examples of combination products may in

ve discovered an instrument of great practical value in communication, which has been overlooked by thousands of workers who have spent years in this field. Any telegraph engineer will at once

lude drug-coated devices, drugs packaged with delivery devices in medical kits, and drugs and devices packaged separately but intended to be used together.

see the fallacy of this plan. The public simply cannot be trusted to handle technical communications equipment … When making a call, the subscriber must give the number verbally to the operato

here is enormous increase in the number of combination products entering the market in the recent years. Combination products have proven advantages but fixe

r who will have to deal with the persons who may be illiterate, speak with lisps or stammer, or have foreign accents or who may be sleepy or intoxicated when making a call … In conclusion, the

d dose combinations are still in the process of convincing regulatory authority on their advantages over the single ingredient formulations.

Combination pro

ommittee feels that it must advise against any investment whatever in Bell’s scheme.” (Martin 1977, p 11)

What was the cause of the blindness exhibited by the Western Union committee?

ucts have become life saving products for the pharmaceutical companies who doesn’t have many innovative molecules in their product pipeline and have been inc

Another common cause of expert misjudgment is the “numeration bias.” Experts, like all humans, tend to assign a value to an idea by the number of people who support it. On the one hand, Wes

easingly used in the product life cycle management. Even the companies having product patents are trying to extend their product life cycle through the combi

ern Union had all the “thousand of workers who spend years in the field” and on the other, the lone Alexander Graham Bell, who wasn’t even an engineer, but a voice teacher. Who would you belie

nation products and maximize the revenues. But the companies involved in this practice are overlooking that they are burdening the patients both economically

ve? Could you blame Western Union for dismissing the value of Bell’s patent? The implications of Western Union’s misguided intuition were profound. In 1877, when three thousand telephones we

and physically. They need to rightly judge the benefits of the combination products and they have to even look at the risks involved when combining the produ

e already in service, Western Union realized that they made a tremendous mistake, and in December of 1877, they set up the American Speaking Telephone Company, in clear violation of Bell’s pate

ts. Some of the combination products were well accepted by physicians while others suffered. Companies involved in development of combination products are fi

nts. In September 1878, the Bell Telephone Company, which was founded in 1877 and owned Bell’s patents, filed suit against Western Union, and although the Bell Company was still a small fledgl

ding difficulty in defining their combination products and facing various challenges from selecting a combination to marketing it.

Following aspects would a

ing company, while Western Union was a giant, it won the law suit and forced Western Union out of the telephone business.

How is this example related to qualitative research? When ana

dd to the challenges in developing combination products:

Which markets to tap where the combination products can do fairly well?
Which combination prod

yzing qualitative data, analysts prone to the numeration bias tend to assign a value to an idea by the number of times it is mentioned in the data, a method known as “frequency counting.” Howe

cts are meaningful and rational?
Which therapeutic categories to select?
Which Combinations can address unmet needs of the patients?
Do combin

ver, frequency counting is ill suited to the analysis of qualitative data. Consider the following example.

“Bill, the duck used his bill to pull a bill out of his

tions increase the patient compliance?
What would be the developing cost?
How to tackle the risks encountered during combination product developmen

pocket to pay the bill and then reconsidered and very angrily said: “Bill me!”

Frequency counting will argue that BILL is the most important word in this sentence. But w

t?

As combination products don't fit into the traditional categories of drugs, medical devices, or biological products, the USFDA is in the process of devel

hich BILL is it? Is it the duck, the beak, the money, the tab, or the charging action? All five BILLs have different meanings and should not be considered as indicating the same idea. Adding

ping new procedures for reviewing their safety, efficacy and quality.

Professional from academic institutions, pharmaceutical industries, health care indust

them up to yield a frequency of five is like adding apples and oranges. Moreover, frequency counting will also tell you that the fact that BILL is very angry is not important since it only men

y and representatives from various regulatory agencies are working out to design the regulatory requirements for manufacture and sale of combination products

tioned once in this sentence.

Unlike structured quantitative data, qualitative data always includes a unique expression, voiced by a single individual, which “says it best.” This ex

.

As there is an increasing trend of the combination products companies manufacturing such products should be able to tackle the problems involved in the de

ression communicates an idea, or sentiment, that many share but only one can articulate. Therefore, when analyzing qualitative data, one should look for articulation rather than numeration. O

elopment. They need to be wiser in analyzing the market trends and the regulatory requirements.

Companies that provide selfless information through particip

therwise, the analysis will produce misleading results and misguided intuition.

Martin J. Future Developments in Telecommunications. Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Prentice-Hall, 1977.

tion in industry events and feedback to regulatory authorities would be able to face the challenges and will be successful in developing combination products

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Organizations and companies have a never-ending need to print dates on documents received by the company and on the documents being printed and processed by the company. Instead of going through the tedious process of printing the individual dates on each paper, one can use a date stamp machine to make things easy.

Are your customers at the centre of your organisation? Are you confident that you can optimize your CRM strategy to maximize value from your CRM technology investments? This White Paper by ROCC outlines just some of the principles of implementing CRM strategies within SMEs and touches upon the role technology plays.

A use case details a flow of events that are executed in order to accomplish some business task.

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