Our mission and strategy
The pharmaceutical industry is experiencing a time of unprecedented challenge. Patent expiries, regulatory issues and increased pressures from healthcare providers have combined to create an environment where our sector is associated with lower growth and higher risk.
We are addressing these challenges through three key strategic priorities that we believe will transform GSK into a company that delivers more growth, less risk and an improved financial performance.
Three strategic priorities
In 2008, we established the following three strategic priorities:
Announcing GSK's 2009 Annual Results, CEO Andrew Witty said, "Our strategy is delivering and I believe that GSK is now moving to a position where we can deliver our goal of long-term sustainable financial performance. 2009 saw GSK return to sales growth and I am confident of our prospects on 2010".
"We have a challenging and inspiring mission to improve the quality of human life by enabling people to do more, feel better and live longer."
Key challenges
The patents on many medicines that have driven sales growth in our industry over the past decade are coming to an end. These medicines may not be replaced by products of equivalent financial size.
In addition, there are increasing pressures on pharmaceutical companies to deliver products with demonstrable benefits over current treatments. We now have to justify that our products represent the greatest value for healthcare providers.
At the same time, the pharmaceutical sector has been exposed to controversy regarding ethical and patient safety issues.
As an industry, we are in danger of eroding what trust we already have when we actually need to be building stronger relationships with governments, regulators and the general public.
These factors have combined to move the industry from one which was expected to deliver high growth at low risk, to the very opposite.
Corporate responsibility
"Corporate responsibility at the heart of our business"
Running our business in a responsible way is fundamental to our success and inseparable from our strategic priorities.
Responsibility is vital in all parts of our business and we understand the need to be open about how we are operating. We also understand that transparency is a key factor in building trust with our stakeholders and have implemented a number of initiatives to improve the transparency of our activities.
