Genentech achieved its first $500 million in revenue in 1991, 15 years after the company was founded; hit its first $1 billion in 1998, seven years later; and then doubled its revenue again with its first $2 billion in 2001, three years later. And the growth continued to accelerate. In 2003 the company achieved $3.3 billion in total operating revenues, and just two years later, in 2005, the number had doubled to $6.6 billion. Genentech’s stock price has doubled in the past year. At one point in December 2006 it had a market cap of $102 billion, making it the 20th-most-valuable company in the U.S., ahead of Merck, Lilly, and every other pharmaceutical company except Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer. Genentech has set itself ambitious goals for the next years. By 2010 it is aiming to achieve $12 billion in revenue and to sustain average annual per share growth rate of 25%. To bring at least 15 major new products or indications onto the market and to become the number one U.S. oncology company in sales.
For over 30 years, Genentech has been at the forefront of the biotechnology industry, using human genetic information to discover, develop, manufacture and commercialize biotherapeutics that address significant unmet medical needs. Today, Genentech manufactures and commercializes multiple medicines that have helped patients suffering from serious diseases. The company has been consistently recognized as one of the top companies to work for in the United States. In January 2006, FORTUNE magazine ranked Genentech #1 on its list of the “100 Best Companies to Work For” in America. Genentech has placed on the FORTUNE list for the last eight years in a row. In 2005, Science magazine named Genentech “the top employer and most admired company in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries” for the fourth year in a row.
The Genentech's secret is rather simple - culture and leaders.
The corporate culture has been its competitive advantage since the day the company was founded in 1976. There are too many things to say about it, but some bright facts can help to make precise impression. Employees don't get assignments; they get "appointments”. They traverse the grounds by shuttle bus and bicycles provided by the company. Every Friday night there's at least one "ho-ho" - Genentechese for kegger - a tradition that began in the '70s when the workforce was mostly a handful of rowdy post-docs barely out of grad school.
"We're extremely nonhierarchical. We're not wearing ties. People don't call us doctor. We don't have special dining rooms”, – says Arthur D. Levinson, Genentech’s impish, brilliant scientist CEO since 1995.
His other words: "At the end of the day, we want to make drugs that really matter". Not that this company considers itself philanthropy. By decade's end, it aims to be the leading U.S. oncology company in terms of sales and a leader in both immunology and tissue-growth disorders, setting ambitious new product goals in each of those categories. The strategy: Fund enough basic research in targeted areas of interest, and the results will yield multiple drugs - or drugs that can be used in multiple ways. Levinson has been following this strategy since he became CEO: during his first two years as a company leader he persuaded the board to plow 50 percent of revenues back into research.
Another company’s leader - Executive Vice President Dr. Richard Scheller asserts that his company “explicitly fosters individual creativity and initiative among its researchers, encouraging scientists to pursue projects of interest in addition to working toward the company's goals”. Such approach makes Genentech an especially rewarding place to work for a scientist like f. ex. Napoleone Ferrara who joining the company in 1988 didn't come for the perks, but for the permission to pursue his 17-year obsession: the study of the formation of blood vessels that feed, say, a tumor, and the search for an antibody to disrupt the process. Finally it led him to discover VEGF, a key to blood-vessel formation, which in turn enabled Genentech to develop an antibody that can choke off the blood supply to certain tumors. Those discoveries laid the groundwork for two of Genentech's newest drugs, Avastin, approved to treat colorectal cancer, and Lucentis, which is awaiting FDA approval for treatment of age-related blindness.
When Genentech’s leaders see signs of culture atrophy, they pounce, as Levinson once did in an e-mail to senior managers about "the spread of unintelligible, gibberish-laden PowerPoint presentations.... I have recently sat through several presentations that were simply incomprehensible - mind-numbing, bloated discourses that were full of buzzwords and otherwise devoid of meaningful content.” He even invented a game called gBuzz Bingo. Here's how to play: From the company intranet, download a bingo card featuring terms like "actionable," "traction," "value-added," and "winwin." Take the card to any meeting where you expect the worst. Check off boxes as the words are uttered. First to complete a line wins, which of course requires that you shout out: "gBuzz!"
Work that really matters. Nothing more. Only things that make the company successful and let its people earn with passion and joy. That’s about Genentech.
Background links:
Genentech: The best place to work now, Fortune If you would like to learn more about creative, funny and productive Genentech’s culture, read this article.
Genentech's Medicine Man, Business Week Here you can find interesting facts brightly illustrating the character of Art Levinson as a Genentech’s leader.
Genentech's Winning Formula, Business Week Read extracts from the interview in which Arthur Levinson speaks about Genentech’s strategy and how to manage scientific community.
http://www.gene.com/ Genentech’s corporate web-site, where you can find very good information about company’s leaders and so-called “family values”.
