Picture your organisation’s chart like a well-ordered biotech facility. At first glance, it’s clean, structured and efficient - precisely engineered. But take a closer look and you’ll notice this structure actually acts as steel bars. These rigid frameworks, often praised for control and clarity, can quietly become cages. They trap innovation, halt momentum and stall sustainable growth. In the high stakes, fast moving world of global pharma and med-tech, where competition is fierce and disruption is constant from COVID, M&As to geopolitical shifts, structural silos stifle breakthroughs and can cost organisations not just time and money, but also their competitive edge (Forbes, 2022).
So how can life science leaders dismantle these silos? First, we must understand how they are built.
Silos aren’t typically built purposefully. They emerge when teams default to working in isolation. They guard knowledge, withhold resources and limit collaboration, often shielding projects from the broader organisational objective. This is often unintentional but has real market consequences (Chronus Blog, ND; Pharmaceutical Manufacturer, 2023).
Several core forces drive this silo mentality:
- Rigid hierarchy and narrow metrics: While functional specialisation fuels deep expertise, without deliberate cross-functional communication, that knowledge stays isolated and underutilised (Medium, 2025; Within3, 2024).
- Disconnected tech and data systems: When platforms can’t talk to each other, neither can people. 68% of life sciences manufacturers say fragmented data systems block unified workflows (Pharmaceutical Manufacturer, 2023, Intelligent CIO, ND; Respa, 2025).
- Cultural risk aversion: In highly regulated environments, 75% of large pharma companies report that fear of failure and strict compliance discourage innovation and collaboration (Forbes, 2022).
Take R&D, for example. Too often, these specialist teams work in isolation, developing cutting-edge therapies without real-time feedback from commercial leaders or input from regulatory experts monitoring approval timelines. This lack of alignment turns knowledge into a departmental asset instead of an organisational one (ZS, 2023, McKinsey, 2018). And once departments go dark on each other, agility disappears.
These barriers often remain hidden in plain sight, overlooked by leadership until the damage is done. In this blog post, we’ll explore their true cost to innovation and performance, and outline how life science leaders can dismantle them to unlock business growth and momentum.
Innovation
Innovation is a key strategic priority and the lifeblood of the life sciences industry. Global biopharmaceutical R&D investment reached $276 billion in 2024 alone (R&D World, 2024), stressing just how critical continuous discovery is. Despite this, many pharmaceutical and med-tech companies are structurally suffocating the very innovation they rely on.
Silos are not benign, they’re one of the most overlooked threats to progress. Nearly 48% of senior pharma leaders report that data silos actively undermine cross-functional efficiency (Pharmaceutical Manufacturer, 2023, Intelligent CIO, ND). When departments operate in isolation, the ripple effects on innovation are profound and costly.
Duplication & Redundancy: At Breakthrough Global, we believe your org chart should be a launchpad, not your cage. When data is fragmented and insights aren’t shared, teams are forced to reinvent the wheel. Projects are repeated, experiments duplicated and opportunities are missed. Instead of accelerating progress, organisations waste valuable time and resources, slowing the path to therapies that matter most.
Missed Insights, Lost in Translation: In some organisations, only 11% of pharma professionals can access unified insights across commercial and medical teams (Within3, 2024, Pharma Leaders, 2024). That means critical data is left sitting in departmental silos, never actually reaching the people who could act on it. Breakthroughs fail because of poor communication.
Intellectual & Creative Stagnation: Siloed cultures dull creativity. Fragmented data systems block the flow of insights that fuel novel approaches. Without fresh inputs, intellectual capital grows stale. Even AI and advanced analytics can’t deliver if they’re starved of comprehensive, cross-departmental data. We believe our methodology introduces radical collaboration rituals that reignite problem-solving energy across teams. With shared objectives and fluid communication, insights become amplified.
Ideas That Go Nowhere: 84% of digital pilots stall within departmental boundaries, with fewer than 30% ever scaling beyond their original silo (Forbes, 2022; Pharma Leaders, 2024). Time and time again, promising innovations never reach enterprise scale. They are dying not due to a lack of talent or investment but from a lack of visibility and interdepartmental support.
Silos Block Digital Adoption. Despite industry-wide investment in cloud platforms, AI, and advanced analytics, only 60% of biopharma companies are using digital systems to guide clinical trials and R&D, and 63% report their risk-averse senior leadership teams as the reason for delayed transformation journeys. (Gitnux, 2025; KPMG, 2025; GlobalNewsWire, 2024). Disjointed systems lead to disconnected teams, fragmented strategies, and innovation frozen in place (Medium, 2025; Pharmaceutical Manufacturer, 2023; Supply Chain 360, 2025). At Breakthrough, we support leadership teams to replace fear-driven paralysis with a culture of confident experimentation and aligned decision-making.
The impact isn’t theoretical. With limited visibility across departments, critical decisions are made in silos and groundbreaking insights are lost in organisational dead-ends. When data flows freely and collaboration is baked into the structure, the results are transformative. Companies that embrace open ecosystems and glocal models, where local insights connect to global capabilities, drive richer innovation. Cross-functional, team-centric approaches don’t just improve speed; they increase long-term impact and ROI. In fact, Novartis saw 300% ROI on real-world evidence initiatives after breaking down internal data silos (Number Analytics, 2025; Xu.F, Wu, L. and Evans. J, 2022). But when teams hoard data, intellectual capital grows stagnant. Open innovation, AI, and advanced analytics cannot help unless they're fuelled by rich, cross‑departmental insight, and silos starve them.
We use Breakthrough Tools to help leaders design these ecosystems that turn disconnected departments into high-achieving value streams. Innovation thrives on access, agility and alignment. Silos block all three. That helps dismantle them permanently.
Speed to Market
From lab bench to bedside, the typical development journey for a new therapy takes 13 to 15 years and costs roughly $2.5 billion on average (Aveva, 2025). Every delay has consequences: for patients awaiting treatment, for providers planning protocols and for companies navigating high-stakes market competition. But organisational silos are compounding this already slow process which introduces delays, duplication and disconnection that cripple launch velocity.
Leaders across pharma and med-tech are now confronting the reality that fragmented systems and disconnected teams compromise impact. Here’s how:
Delays in Launches & Decisions: Over 53% of large pharma companies say that internal silos are a direct cause of delayed product launches and sluggish decision-making. Lack of visibility between R&D, regulatory and commercial departments delays critical steps like market-readiness assessments, supply alignment and go-to-market planning (Pharmaceutical Manufacturer, 2023, Intelligent CIO, ND).
Slow Crisis Response: When regulatory or supply chain disruptions hit, and they do in such high-stakes industries, siloed teams struggle to respond in real time. Without an integrated crisis protocol, decisions get bogged down in handoffs between fragmented committees. Agile, cross-functional teams can adjust quickly. Siloed ones stall, often fatally, during high-pressure pivots.
Value Inefficiencies: Pharma’s traditional operating model, built on sequential handoffs, creates bottlenecks. However, companies that have reorganised around end-to-end value streams, combining R&D, quality, regulatory and commercial into unified teams, have reported lead time reductions of 45–75% (Medium, 2025). Breakthrough transforms vertical hierarchies into dynamic, interconnected value creation ecosystems that drive speed without compromising rigour.
This disconnect between potential and practice creates real risks. The industry faces a staggering 90% failure rate in clinical development, despite immense investments (Aveva, 2025), which leads to increased prices for the consumer. In a world of fast-evolving health challenges and rising stakeholder expectations, the price of inertia is only growing. To accelerate speed to market, life science leaders must design connected, collaborative operating models. It’s not just about digital tools. It’s about replacing silos with purpose-built, cross-functional cultures where accountability and speed go hand-in-hand. Cross-functional alignment must be built into the system, not added on later.
Business Growth
In the life sciences industry, growth depends on precision, speed and alignment across every function - from initial discovery in R&D to final delivery in market access. These silos operate like hidden throttles constraining business expansion, commercial impact and sustainable value creation.
Revenue Leakages through Poor Alignment. When sales, marketing, medical affairs, and R&D operate behind locked gates, revenue opportunities fall through the cracks. Disconnected teams block the flow of information and miss opportunities to capitalise on market demand. 53% of large pharma companies report that silos directly delay product launches and cause slow commercial decision-making, cutting into revenue windows and competitive edge (Pharmaceutical Manufacturer, 2023, Intelligent CIO, ND). In sectors like oncology and rare disease, where timing defines market leadership, this misalignment costs millions.
Inability to Scale Innovation. Siloed structures mean even successful R&D doesn’t always translate into commercial success. Pfizer’s own internal cages, those early silos separating teams, evolved into success stories once they prioritised dismantling them through cross-functional collaboration. As Mike Tomasco from Pfizer Digital explains, embracing problem‑solving mindsets, adaptability, and strategic storytelling helped teams bridge functional divides. Meanwhile, Snowflake's platform unified data across departments (‘One Pfizer’), enabling seamless sharing and faster insights (Katalyzeai, 2024; Snowflake, ND). Without collaboration, innovation stalls, even before it sees the light of day. Without structured handoffs and integrated roadmaps between R&D, regulatory, and commercial teams, the business never realises full return on innovation investment (IMD, 2022).
Client Centricity Suffers: In today’s omnichannel, data-rich environment, patient and provider expectations are rising fast. While 89% of medical affairs leaders name patient-centricity as a strategic priority, 72% of their teams still lack direct access to patient insights (Inspire Research, 2025). As a result, commercial teams are missing the critical context needed to embed scientific understanding into the broader customer journey. That leaves a substantial portion unable to share unified intelligence effectively. Across an estimated two‑thirds of companies, medical and commercial still operate as distinct and independent functions, hampering integrated strategies (Pharma Source, 2023). Siloed structures lead to fragmented messaging, where each touchpoint feels inconsistent and disconnected. This breakdown makes it increasingly difficult to deliver the personalised, timely and trusted healthcare experiences patients and providers now expect. Companies like GSK have addressed this challenge by adopting a “One Team” model, bringing medical, commercial, regulatory, and compliance functions together to speak with a single, unified voice. For customers, this translated into a seamless, coordinated experience that fostered trust and reinforced relevance (ZS, 2023).
At Breakthrough, we make that cultural shift possible, embedding team-centric systems that align global strategy with local execution. Our Programmes don’t just lift silos, they replace them with sustainable, collaborative operating ecosystems. Whether launching global products or entering emerging markets, sustainable growth in life sciences hinges on agile, aligned execution. Yet, siloed systems continue to hold organisations back. Sustained growth in this sector demands orchestrated performance across every function, from discovery to delivery.
The Role of Leadership
If silos are the cages holding back innovation, leadership holds the keys. These barriers don’t dismantle themselves. It takes intentional, visible leadership to break open the rigid frameworks that strangle speed, creativity and growth.
Leaders in pharma and med-tech must become system architects who design for alignment, not just excellence in isolation. The most transformative life sciences organisations don’t succeed because they have the best individual teams. They succeed because they build collaborative engines that drive value from bench to bedside.
- Set the Tone for Collaboration: Culture cascades from the top. Leaders must role-model the behaviours they want to see, i.e., transparency, curiosity and accountability. When executives actively champion collaboration across teams, like co-owning key metrics or conducting joint strategic reviews, walls start to come down. Where leaders stay in silos, so does everyone else. At AstraZeneca (2024), executives actively lead integrated portfolio councils, bringing science, strategy and sales together in one room. This has driven faster go/no-go decisions and clearer commercial alignment across assets.
- Redesign Incentives & Metrics Around Shared Outcomes: Too many life sciences companies still measure success vertically i.e. R&D on patents filed, commercial on revenue, and regulatory on approvals. But growth happens horizontally. Leaders must redefine success as collaborative progress, measured by shared outcomes such as speed-to-market, patient impact, or cross-functional ROI. Johnson & Johnson replaced siloed delivery metrics with cross-functional KPIs tied to portfolio value, enabling smoother research-to-market transitions and higher-impact product launches (McKinsey, 2022).
- Break the Org Chart: Transformation happens when leaders design fluid, cross-functional operating models that turn rigid hierarchies into agile ecosystems. That means investing in systems and rituals from integrated product teams, regular knowledge transfers, and digital collaboration platforms that support fast, transparent decision-making. At Breakthrough, we help senior teams design ways of working that align strategy, behaviours and execution. These build cross-functional momentum alive even under pressure.
Ultimately, leaders must own the transformation from siloed command-and-control to connected, purpose-led collaboration. That means not just supporting new ways of working but championing them relentlessly. When leaders stay silent on silos, they become complicit in the stagnation. As complexity grows, leadership cannot just be about control. In the life sciences sector especially, leaders must shift towards unlocking collective intelligence. Breaking down silos requires a cultural shift. And it starts at the top.
