Essay About Millipore New Product Commercialization And Dave Strand

Millipore New Product Commercialization
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Harvard Business School 9-594-010
Rev. September 12, 1994
Millipore New Product Commercialization:
A Tale of Two New Products
In 1993, Millipore was poised to launch several innovative product lines. Company
executives had particularly high hopes for the LC/MS product line in the Waters Chromatography
Division and Viresolve in the Process Division. Much of the potential success of these products rested
on commercialization decisions made in the past three years by their respective protagonists: Dave
Strand, V.P. for new business development at Waters, and Paul Sekhri, product manager for
Viresolve at the Process Division.
In early 1990, Dave Strand was given the task of commercializing Millipores innovative
liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry (LC/MS) product line. Strand had come to Waters a few
years earlier, when the software firm he helped found was purchased by Waters. A rising star in the
Waters Chromatography Division, he hoped that successful introduction of these products would
reestablish Waters claim to technological leadership in the liquid chromatography (LC) marketplace.
That title had been challenged for the first time in 1983 when Hewlett-Packard–until then a small
player in the LC market–had beaten Waters to market with the photodiode array (PDA) detector for
liquid chromatography systems. Waters still dominated the LC market that it gave birth to in 1958
with 40%-45% of the global LC market (to HPs 22%-23%). With the introduction of new technologies
like LC/MS, Waters sought to place a lock on the LC market that would make it unprofitable for any
firm to challenge its position. As Dave Strand put it, “We want to make the view not worth the
climb.”
In October 1990, Paul Sekhri, a young marketing manager with several years of experience
working for start-ups in the biotech industry, was hired to commercialize a newly developed
membrane system capable of removing viruses from protein drugs developed using biotechnology.
Over the last few years Millipore had been struggling to better serve the rapidly growing
biotechnology industry, and the virus removal product was one of the most promising biotechnology
products that Millipore had yet developed. While “market characterization” and beta tests had been a
central part of the development process, when Sekhri arrived he was met with many remaining
commercialization issues:
When I started, my boss, Tim Leahy, said, “Your job is to commercialize this
product.” So I asked, “Whats the name of it?” He said, “Thats up to you.” I asked,
“What are you charging for it?” He said, “Thats up to you.” I asked, “How are you
distributing it?” He said “Thats up to you.” There was just a big, clean slate.
Research Associate Kevin Bartus prepared this case under the supervision of Professor V. Kasturi Rangan as the basis for
class discussion rather than to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of an administrative situation.
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594-010 Millipore New Product Commercialization: A Tale of Two New Products
Millipores leading competitor in virus removal was Asahi, a small Japanese company. Asahis
membrane products, except for the virus removal membrane, were distributed in the United States by
Pall. Worldwide, Pall was Millipores leading competitor with 13% share. Millipore (with $174
million in sales) had 22%.
Millipore Corporate Background
With worldwide sales of $750 million in 1991, Millipore was the market leader in the $3.4
billion separations industry. Millipores products were primarily based on two separations
technologies: membrane technology and chromatography.
Membrane technology separated the components of a substance primarily according to the