Why Takeda no longer has an ‘IT department’ as part of drugmaker’s digital and data transformation

When Gabriele Ricci became chief data and technology officer at Takeda Pharmaceuticals, one of the biggest cultural changes he made was to ditch the term “information technology.”

“We don’t use the word IT anymore,” says Ricci, who was appointed to lead the data, digital and technology function at the Japan-based pharmaceutical company from 2022. “We believe our function is a business function.”

While this may seem largely symbolic, Takeda, which develops oncology, rare disease, and gastroenterology and inflammation treatments, has substantially reorganized its technology operations under Ricci’s leadership. Ricci reports directly to CEO Christophe Weber, giving the technology division a key position in the C-suite. His predecessor reported to the Chief Financial Officer.

Three years ago, 80% of the company’s technology needs were met by external contractors. Ricci disliked relying so heavily on third parties, and Takeda hired thousands of engineers, data scientists, and architects. It placed them in three large innovation centers, called “digital factories,” internally, in India, Mexico, and Slovakia to co-develop technology with different business functions.

This structure represents a more federated approach, Ricci says, adding that “we have a scientific pipeline and a digital pipeline that are managed together.”

Ricci has spent his entire technology career in the pharmaceutical industry, starting at Bristol-Myers Squibb, then Johnson & Johnson, Novartis and Shire. He joined Takeda after it acquired Shire for $62 billion in 2019.

In recent years, he says, the environment for pharmaceutical companies has become more volatile. There is more economic stress, more pressure on spending, and higher expectations from consumers. “If you’re not investing in digital now and enabling a big change, we risk our existence,” Ricci warns.

Takeda has also been more aggressive about improving employees. More than half of the company’s workforce has taken virtual or in-person courses and training for new technologies like AI. There are thousands of classes available in over 100 different languages.

The focus on upskilling has included new generative AI tools such as the chatbot “myAibou,” — aibou means “companion” in Japanese — that has more than 24,000 users. Used by Takeda employees for summarizing, content creation, and other repetitive tasks. Takeda says generative AI is being used across the company in operations from R&D to the supply chain. Ricci says that all of Takeda’s AI and generative AI tools are designed to be auditable, monitored for bias and discrimination, and Adhere to the company’s ethical AI framework.

Takeda is buying and building generative AI tools using models from providers including Microsoft, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Amazon Web Services. In areas where Takeda wants to maintain a clear competitive advantage, such as research, it will seek to build more of its own models.

Ricci says the combination of multiple models is particularly appealing. For writing about medical topics, for example, one model may be very adept at picking out scientific information, while another is skilled at image processing, and yet another at interpreting the results of multiple data sets from research. can

“There is no one-size-fits-all model,” Ricci says. “If you rely on just one, it’s actually going to be less accurate than putting multiple models together.”

John Cale

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earlier this week, good luck Hosted the Fortune Global Forum conference in New York, where some sessions focused on the intersection of technology and business. In one, the CEOs of Honeywell and Lumen talked about the critical importance of AI and creating a corporate culture that embraces it. You can catch up on all that happened at the conference through this archive of articles about individual sessions and video replays.

By the way, if you’d like to join us for the Fortune Brainstorm AI conference in San Francisco from December 9-10, you can find information and request an invite here. It will include top business and tech executives. Rohit PrasadAmazon Senior Vice President and Chief Scientist, Artificial General Intelligence; Liz ReidGoogle Vice President, Search; Christopher YoungMicrosoft’s Executive Vice President of Business Development, Strategy, and Ventures; and former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernickwhich has its own AI startup.

News packets

CIOs are bracing for change in Washington after Trump’s win. gave The Wall Street Journal Reports on the impact of President-elect Donald Trump’s policy changes, including potential regulation of emerging technologies such as AI and tariffs that could make foreign-made hardware more expensive. Therefore, chief information officers may require larger budgets. Trump has already said he would rescind the Biden administration’s executive order on AI, which sought to manage some of the technology’s risks, while The New York Times Guess he will Take a light touch if possible On regulation in an effort to foster innovation.

Chipmakers are scrambling to finalize subsidy deals after the election. Bloomberg Reports That companies trying to secure billions of dollars under the 2022 CHIPS and SCIENCE Act are racing to consolidate their awards before partisan politics cause a possible shutdown. Meanwhile, in Washington, USA told A Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturing company will stop shipping advanced chips to Chinese customers during the House panel Send letters Five semiconductor manufacturers to disclose details of their sales to China and other transaction information. Finally, Japan Pledged $65 billion. To support the semiconductor and AI sectors locally, as the nation aims to continue spending globally.

Salesforce to hire 1,000 to capitalize on AI’s ‘momentum’ In 2024, tech giants including Apple, Google, and SAP Thousands of employees were laid off.partly in an effort to realign its workforce with the right skills in an AI-driven world. Last week, business software giant Salesforce, which has also cut jobs in recent years, said it would do so. Hire over 1,000 workers. To sell the company’s new generative AI agent. The staffing increase comes as Salesforce focuses its AI strategy on agents that can often perform tasks such as customer support or sales development without human supervision.

The adoption curve

C-suite and lower-level executives are not attuned to the potential of general AI. Oh studied Digital consultancy Publicis Sapient found that the C-suite and V-suite—including VPs, SVPs, and other executives in senior leadership—have different attitudes about the potential and risks of generative AI. More than half of C-suite respondents rated generative AI as “very important” to customer service, customer experience, and sales, while the V-suite was less bullish. Conversely, the V-suite is far more optimistic about the impact on operations, HR, and finance than the C-suite.

Meanwhile, 51% of the C-suite were more concerned about the risk and ethics of generative AI than other emerging technologies, such as the V-suite. compared to only 23% of respondents.