Competency‐based benchmarking

Flawless product launches are critical success factors for biopharmaceutical companies due to increasing financial and technological risks. Industry benchmarking is widely used for managing biopharmaceutical product launch planning. However, while industry benchmarking may achieve operational efficiencies, it results in copying competitors and incremental productivity improvements rather than breakthrough in marketing innovation. This study extends the biopharmaceutical marketing framework from internally focused industry benchmarking to external competency‐based benchmarking (CBB) to build innovative practices by focusing on outstanding capabilities in far reaching industries and organizations. Adopting a CBB approach can lead to creating significant sources of organizational energy and creativity in biopharmaceutical marketing campaigns.