Benjamin, can you please introduce yourself?
I’m 49, married, with two beautiful teenage kids. When I’m not working, you’ll probably find me playing chess. I’ve always been drawn to complex situations, and that’s true in my professional life as well—I love solving unconventional problems. The harder and more tangled the situation looks, the more energy I get from trying to untie it.
You spent many years at Roche before founding Wolf Advisors. What pushed you to take the leap, and how did you manage to land 10 clients in your first 10 months, largely through cold calls and networking?
In my mind, it’s a bit like drug development: you need ten promising compounds to end up with one real drug. I applied the same logic to my business development. I reached out to ten serious prospects, and typically one of them became a client.
That discipline came from my early days. I started as a primary care sales rep in one of the toughest pharma environments you could be and I was very good at it. Later on, I moved into global strategic projects at Roche, leading many launches at global. So when I started Wolf Advisors, I combined three skills: the willingness to do cold outreach and ask for business, the long strategic experience from big global projects and launches, and of course to deliver what I promised.
So there’s no miracle behind my first ten clients and success —just a systematic approach and persistence.
One of your big career highlights was tripling patient share from 9% to 20% at of some Roche brands. What were the key “rational choice” insights there, and did omnichannel really move the needle?
For me, rational choice means understanding what your metrics are actually telling you and not letting emotions or vanity drive decisions. I’ve seen teams celebrate e.g. a fantastic Net Promoter Score for years without asking if and how that score should advances their strategy. It’s about mastering good tradeoffs and understanding its impact and ‘opportunity costs’, that’s all.
On omnichannel, my view is nuanced and I can only comment for pharma and for outside the US: it can work well on a small scale—especially in medical communication or very focused commercial pilots. But the large, all‑singing‑all‑dancing omnichannel programs often collapse under their own weight: CRM limitations, privacy laws, unrealistic assumptions about what the data can do.
When you keep it simple and honest about what’s achievable, it works, but is a far cry from what it’s promoted for. I expect that it’s soon replaced by something new, the waste of money right now is obvious to all.
You’ve spent a lot of time leading global launches in neurology—Parkinson’s, MS, Alzheimer’s, and also of some rare diseases. How different is it to build strategy for large mass‑market indications versus rare diseases?
Less different than many people assume. At a strategic level, the fundamentals are always the same: segmentation, targeting and positioning. If you’re clear on those three, you have a compass and don’t overcompensate your lack of strategic depth with many unnecessary activities to camouflage it. Where rare diseases diverge is mainly in the execution.
The stakeholder landscape changes: patient groups, specialised diagnostic centres, ultra‑expert clinicians. And there’s often a huge effort required just to find patients, because the few are mis‑ or undiagnosed.
You also led biosimilars defense across 23 countries. What was the toughest policy battle you faced, and how does that experience shape how you look at antibodies and biosimilars today?
Working across that many markets gives you a deep respect and feeling for policy frameworks. Right now, e.g. the joint HTA/JCA processes in Europe, the biosimilar regulation and the changing acceptance and usability of high quality Real World evidence in the US are among the most interesting developments.
They create a completely new ‘game’ and evidentiary environment that all have to learn to navigate, and it’s complex. Very central and long lasting ‘rules of the game’ change, rules that don’t get as much attention like Donald Trumps MFN, but might be even more dramatic in its impact.
What struck me is how differently companies respond to it. Large, established organisations seem to spend two or three years aligning / fighting internally over who owns the problem, while more agile players seem to decide and gain the strategic advantage of the future. In a few years we’ll know who was too sluggish in adapting, for sure.
These days you work a lot with investors in cardiovascular and neuro, and with early‑stage startups. In that environment, what makes a standout Target Product Profile or business case—and what are red flags that kill a Series A pitch?
Stripped down to basics, investors want answers to tho questions: first, is there a real, meaningful market; and second, can you realistically capture it?
The biggest red flag I see is superficial thinking around market size. You still see slides saying, “The total addressable market (TAM) is $10 billion; if we just get 10%, that’s a $1 billion business and a blockbuster!” That often tells investors the team hasn’t done its commercial homework, just some shortcuts: And the investors always ‘buy the team, not the asset’.
What they want to see is a nuanced view of positioning, feel that there was a longer and deeper commercial thinking process. It’s no surprise that roughly 80% of companies that complete a ‘Series A’ never make it to ‘Series B’—not all fail of course, some are acquired or make money, but many miss to build a credible commercial story.
You’ve lived and launched products in the US, Japan, Switzerland and Germany, and you’ve worked closely with China. What are some cultural or regulatory quirks you’ve encountered? How does market access play out differently—for example, for pens versus infusions in China?
One useful way to think about markets is along a “speed versus price” axis. Some places, like the US and Germany, put a premium on fast access and are therefore more open to higher pricesfor speed. Others are willing to move slowly if it means negotiating the price down. Then you have the local evidence generation and customer relationship dimension.
Japan and China, for instance, typically require and generate highest quality local data, local KOL support, sometimes local early access programs. China is front and center in new studies, up to 30% of the trial participants are recruited in China. So you can’t run those launches from a global HQ with a strategic slide deck. Success depends on strong partnerships with local teams—agreeing on a few non‑negotiable principles and then allowing genuine localisation, in my experience is far less led by global than many think.
Post‑pandemic, digital and social media are on everyone’s lips. What’s your go‑to playbook for launches now?
In the USA it’s different than ex US. Ex US Digital is important, but may be not in the way people think. Social media can be very useful for start‑ups that want to communicate funding milestones or scientific progress in a transparent way. But for large pharma outside of the US market, the legal constraints around promotion to lay audiences make most corporate social content rather bland. I don’t know any brand whose commercial success story genuinely begins with “our social media campaign”. But as said, in the US it’s different as it’s a completely different legal environment for what you’re allowed to do in digital.
Where the real global shift has happened is in customer interaction and how a skilled employee can scale up his reach. Ten years ago, having a digital call with a physician felt exotic and you encountered massive IT problems trying it, some doctors need 3 people (!) supporting them during a simple video call. But during and after the pandemic, it became normal for all. Now almost everyone has the skills and infrastructure to do high‑quality virtual engagements. That massively increases the reach and productivity of good employees. In my view, that’s may be the biggerdigital revolution in pharma. Add AI to that and the boost is even bigger.
What drives you?
At heart, I’m driven by solving problems that initially look impossible. It’s very similar to a tough chess endgame: you stare at the board, you think there is no way out, and then suddenly you see a line that works. That “aha” moment—when a dead‑end turns into a path forward—is incredibly satisfying for me. That’s what keeps me in the game.
Finally, after 20 years in the industry, what are a couple of big lessons that have really stayed with you?
One paradox has stayed with me. On the surface, the language in big companies has become softer and softer over the years—lots of talk about agility, empowerment, being one big happy family, no questions is stupid, anybody can be promoted to whatever he/she aspires. But underneath, the real behaviour has become harder and more merciless over the years.
So while the corporate language became softer, many realities became harder and colder. Similarly, many companies cheer their ‘diversity culture’, but in reality they became intellectually more and more homogenous, superficial and boring. Add to that the social media like LinkedIn that reminds all of what the expectation is, and also where they have to add a like it.
Whenever I step outside that bubble and work with other types of companies, I’m reminded that there are always alternative ways of doing things, and many enjoy they can talk with me without any corporate slang: Just an open and candid dialogue, what became very rare within some companies. That, for me, is one of the most important lessons—and one reason I enjoy working across such a broad mix of clients today.
