What do Gilead, Biogen, and Celgene have in common? Qualities to be the top three drugmakers ranked by both R&D productivity and growth, according to a novel method for measuring such criteria that management consulting firm Catenion says offers insights for achieving such success.

Blockbuster status has long been the ultimate goal of drug development, defined as a sales potential of more than $1bn. The economics of drug development, and in fact of the entire biopharma industry, very much rely on these few gems that provide the returns to compensate for the long development pathway and often several billion dollars of investment per new molecular entity.

An analysis of the R&D productivity of the world’s 30 largest public pharmaceutical companies reveals an overall drop in R&D productivity, but this should not hide the fact that some companies are still performing extremely well.