Batten down the hatches. The voyage ahead is one of Odyssean proportions, with generic drugs ready to suck away sales like the Charybdis maelstrom and biotech bewitching R&D like the irresistible Circe. By year's end, we're expected to see only 5 to 6 percent growth industry-wide. But like all voyages, this one can be a transition, a route from one place to another. The layoffs and restructuring that will play out this year can lead to better, stronger, faster companies--or not. The new execs [0] still gearing up or taking over this year could lead their crews into new, creative passages--or not. Biotech fever [0] could transform pharma into exciting and profitable innovators--or R&D execs could transform into farm animals.

Okay, that's taking the analogy a bit far. But the point is this: Pharma could consider itself embattled, stymied, doomed. It could look back wistfully at the old ways of doing business [0], at its portfolios of aging meds. Or it could face forward to steer through the tight straits ahead, toward a new, very different destination.

Our bet? A few companies will reinvent themselves. The rest will tack here and there, looking for ways to recapture the cozy past, and founder.

- read the report [1] about Pharma's upcoming challenges
- see this press release [2] from IMS Health on 2008 sales growth
- read The Motley Fool's Big Pharma forecast [3]

Related Articles:
Say goodbye to Big Pharma's gilded age. Report [3]
PwC to pharma: Adapt and invest or die. Report [4]
New drug approval lags in 2007. Report [5]
Lines blur as Big Pharma crosses borders into biotech. Report [6]