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about us

 
 
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Industries Served

We only serve life sciences clients, but within the life sciences, our mandate is broad. Anything that touches human biology or health is within our wheelhouse.

 
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OUR EXPERTISE

We Focus on the Commercial Business

Our clients are primarily in global and local marketing, commercial operations, sales, value & access, and related areas. Occasionally our work encompasses closely adjacent functions such as corporate strategy, business development, and innovation/digital. We can also advise R&D, supply chain, technology, or back-office functions if a consultancy with commercial expertise is required.

 
 
 

What Differentiates Spindle?

  • We bring the best people to our client engagements. Our people know life sciences and have successful track-records facing clients in your space. They have life sciences + business training from top schools.

  • We bring core scientific skills. We understand the underlying medical issues. We read the papers in peer-reviewed journals and identify and speak with the KOLs (before we talk to you).

  • We understand the healthcare marketplace. We know the complex array of stakeholders in the healthcare delivery value-chain. We not only know what they do but also how and why they do it.

  • We work hard for you starting from the first meeting. For us, the early scoping proposal process is “phase I” of our engagement with you. By the time you sign the agreement, we will have already delivered.

  • We know the industry players. We can make game-changing introductions. We can get key enablers on the phone, either as thought-leader interviews or as potential business partners.

  • We bring program leadership, cross-functional relationship skills, and can manage both up and down. We keep our clients organized through the twists and turns of complex programs.

  • We are laser-focused on execution, solutions, and results. We develop breakthrough programs and partnerships for our clients. When possible, we measure the impact of our work. Our solutions propel wins in the marketplace.

  • We can be flexible. Need to stop and restart a program? No problem. Consultants can be physically onsite at clients, at our virtual offices, or work from home. We can provide individual advisers or teams. We can price engagements in the way that makes the most sense, whether fixed-firm, per diem, or value-based.

  • We are cost effective. In an era of giant consulting firms with equally impressive overheads, we maintain no office space or other physical assets. 100% of our people are client facing—all administrative/operational functions are outsourced. A virtual operation results in savings that we can pass on to our clients.

 
 
 
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Meet Our Founder

Robert Dickinson, Principal

Robert has 20 years of life sciences commercial strategy and operations experience. Before founding Spindle Life Sciences Consulting, he held senior client-facing roles at Accenture, where he was responsible for driving new relationships with large biotechnology and medical device companies. Robert partnered with his clients to solution and deliver complex commercial transformation programs. He also led the Medical Technologies Commercial Transformation practice, reporting to the Global Managing Director of the firm’s med tech practice.

Robert advises both life sciences start-ups AND large biopharma clients, bringing both an entrepreneurial approach AND operations excellence to ALL of his clients. 

Before Accenture, Robert held positions at ZS Associates and Deloitte Consulting. During his consulting career, he has had client development and delivery leadership responsibility for 150+ consulting projects, all of which were in the life sciences space. His work has spanned greenfield corporate strategy, portfolio strategy, customer strategy, product commercialization, launch readiness, lifecycle management, commercial operations, M&A/partnering strategy, and sales effectiveness. 

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He is particularly passionate about applying healthcare innovation, such as digital health, beyond-the-medicine solutions, precision health analytics, remote device connectivity, volume-to-value shifting/health economics, patient-centric approaches, and alternative site care. He has authored thought-leadership articles (while at Accenture, ZS Associates, and Deloitte) and spoken at numerous events about these topics. His views about healthcare trends have been quoted in PharmaVoice Magazine in articles about Big Pharma R&D and “Nichebuster” Models, as well as in Oncology & Biotech News, Time Magazine, and USA Today.

Robert currently volunteers for the QB3 Pitch Summit as a judge and mentor to startups in the Bay Area. He also has served on the Pantheon Awards Advisory Council for the California Life Sciences Association (formerly BayBio) since 2015.

Robert began his career as a bench researcher in the Pharmacological Sciences organization of Genentech, where he focused on late-stage clinical development of Herceptin. He holds a BA in Molecular & Cell Biology from the University of California, Berkeley.

 
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