Mr Hu

1. Problem Recognition

Napo Pharmaceuticals aims at doing business in HIV-related diarrhea and IBS market. In order to financing their key product Crofelemer, Napo is hoping that the Public-Private Partnership will bring them enough funds. However, it is remarkably difficult to strike a deal. On the other hand, the failure of Shaman revealed serious financial problems, as well as the effectiveness of their bioprospecting strategy.

2. Situation Analysis

1. External Analysis

On the one hand, there is great potential in IBS and HIV-related diarrhea market since Crofelemer has proven to be safe and effective. Also, with close cooperation with the indigenous peoples in the Amazon River Basin and with abundant natural resources, Napo is unique in its business model and hopefully will have competitive advantages over other competitors in the market. It is worth mentioning that instead of traditional pharmaceutical approach-concentrating on rich people and charging high prices and later the drugs will be available in developing world after several years when patents have expired, Napo’s perseverance on distributing drugs in the third-world has more or less won word-of-mouth of people from poorer countries. Besides, if Napo is to work with PHI and Gelb, Gelb’s capital and PHI’s expertise of drug development, positive reputation and strong clinical staff are valuable to Napo’s development.

On the other hand, in spite of sound scientific evidence for Crofelemer, Shaman’s failure accumulated negative word-of-mouth of Napo and whether or not Napo is able to get rid of Shaman’s shadow is open to doubt. Worse, the Public-Private Partnership’s drawbacks are conspicuous. Besides the complex structure and document, it is time-consuming to arrange and demands significant senior staff attention. Furthermore, it needs a great amount of time for Napo, PHI and Gelb to get to know each other and find an effective way to work together. Additionally, PHI has been coveting on...