Ed Silverman at Pharmalot posted an interesting interview excerpt from Ken Carter, CEO of Avalon Pharmaceuticals. Ken was asked by Pharmaceutical Executive how he would change things at Pfizer if he were in Jeff Kindler’s shoes. Here’s his response:

One of the things I’ve seen pretty consistently over the last 10-15 years is that pipelines seem to be driven by short-term vision. That view leads to things like mergers and acquisitions in the hopes that the combined pipeline will be stronger than the individual pipelines. The problem is that the combined R&D capabilities aren’t any better. On top of that, once these mergers occur, it takes between one and two years to integrate the early-stage discovery functions.

If I were running Pfizer—or a top-five pharmaceutical company—I’d resist the shareholder pressure to try to address my near-term pipeline issues and instead try to create a more realistic strategy for a 10-year plan to generate medium-stage pipeline products by emphasizing internal R&D.

A variety of other execs also provide thoughtful responses. So, how would YOU change Pfizer if YOU were Jeff Kindler?