Getting To The Core Of CoreRx
By Ed Miseta, Chief Editor, Clinical Leader
By Ed Miseta, editor, Clinical Leader and Outsourced Pharma
CoreRx officially opened its new 35,000–square-foot facility in Clearwater, FL on January 17, 2013, and members of the Life Science Leader team were there. The process all began last August, and when you think about it, going from a 3,300-square-foot facility to something more than 10 times as big is a pretty big deal . According to executives, the decision to make the move was driven by customer need. Apparently, customers were pleased with the productivity of the organization, as they were the recipient of a 2012 CMO Leadership Award in that category. I look forward to congratulating them in person during the reception and ceremony on March 13, 2013 at the W in New York City. The company should be very proud of this award as it is driven by customer data gathered by an external market research organization, not a nomination process.
Good To Great
Moving from a complex that will more than triple the company’s per-day production capacity reminds me of how Jim Collins, in his book Good to Great, describes the process of companies transforming from being merely a good company, to that which is considered great and admired by others — similar to a baby chick breaking through the exterior of its eggshell. To me, though the breakthrough moment is an exciting milestone, it is preceded by a significant amount of change taking behind the scenes. And once free, the process of change is continuous, because great companies are constantly raising the bar for themselves, which raises the bar for industry. Is CoreRx great? Obviously, that remains to be seen. The companies to which Collins refers (e.g. Abbott, Kimberly-Clark, Philip Morris, and Walgreens) were evaluated over a 15-year period and supposedly stood the test of time. Even so, some, such as Circuit City, have since gone out of business. CoreRx, founded in 2006, is still 3 years away from celebrating its 10th birthday. That being said, it seems as if the leadership of the company has established a framework to get there, starting with level 5 leadership.
Level 5 Leadership
CoreRx was founded by four former colleagues of MDS Pharma Solutions. The start-up began with a frugal budget and big dreams. Todd Daviau, the company’s president and CEO, would certainly defer the success of the company to the efforts of employees such as Matt Greene, senior formulator, Simon Daw, director of manufacturing, or even Omanice Brady, the receptionist who greeted the Life Science Leader team like she was welcoming us into her home. But a company’s success starts with a level 5 leader, and that leader sets the tone for everything else that follows, including a culture of excellence. To me, what differentiates level 5 leadership is the willingness to think big. For example, leaders at CoreRx have their hands pretty full growing a business, adding employees, and moving into a new facility. Nonetheless, the company, which has been in existence for only seven years, already has its own foundation – CoreRx Cares, dedicated to improving the lives of at-risk children and families throughout the Tampa Bay area. I call this “Big Picture Thinking.” Here is another example of big picture/forward thinking. The design of the new facility places a key portion of the manufacturing area on an exterior wall of the building. The natural inclination would be to have it in the center in accordance with traditional workflows. However, placing it on an exterior wall means that when it comes time for an expansion in the future, CoreRx will be able to expand without disrupting other key operations located in the facility’s interior. So the core of CoreRx is not at its core. But that type of thinking usually makes all the difference.