Case Analysis: Eli Lilly-Developing Cymbalta

Introduction Colonel Eli Lilly founded Eli Lilly and Company in 1876 when he purchased a laboratory on Pearl Street in Indianapolis, Indiana. The company success included creating the process for applying gelatin coating to pills for easier swallowing and the introduction of Iletin, which was the first mass-produced insulin that improved the treatment for diabetes. Eli Lilly and Company was often called “the Prozac Company” after the success of Prozac in 1988 however; the patent was soon to expire. New Antidepressant Team (NAT), a cross functional team of Lilly research and development (R&D) and marketing was formed by two colleagues at Lily – Mark Demitrack and Brett Schmidli, and later two additional members were asked to joined, Jim Lancaster and John Kaiser. The mission of the team was to find and develop a drug that would later replace Prozac. The core strategy of NAT was to concentrate and devote resources to only 5 Assets: “R-fluoxetine, OFC (olanzapine-fluoxetine combination), 5HT2 antagonist SSRI, Business Development Opportunities, and Cymbalta (duloxetine)” (Ofek & Laufer, p. 8). After a series of analysis and testing, Cymbalta was chosen by the team to replace Prozac. This paper will identify the strategic issues and problems that NAT faced in developing the new product. I will then analyze and evaluate the industry and market behavior by using a SWOT analysis. Finally, this paper will offer a set of recommendations based on the surrounding circumstances and options available to the Eli Lilly team.
Identification of the strategic issues and problems

Eli Lilly is faced with the strategic option to develop and launch a new drug that will be more effective than Prozac. There are several issues facing the launch of Cymbalta into the marketplace. “Cymbalta (duloxetine) appeared to have the three key ingredients of a potential successor to Prozac: 1) efficacy as good as or better than existing antidepressants, 2) no