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SECTOR ANALYSIS: HEALTHCARE & PHARMA - MAY 2026
The numbers are there. The strategy is set. The plans are announced. What no one is talking about: the profiles required to execute this transformation do not look like those the sector typically recruits.
THE CONTEXT IN THREE FIGURES
×10 | 9 % | 7 |
|---|---|---|
Delay in access to therapeutic innovations vs Germany | Only of new treatments produced in France | Major laboratories founding Initiative Pharma: Sanofi, Ipsen, Servier, Pierre Fabre, LFB, Guerbet, Théa |
Source: Leem/PwC Barometer, June 2025 | Source: Leem/PwC Barometer, June 2025 | Source: Initiative Pharma, January 2026 |
In June 2025, Leem's 360° Barometer delivered a blunt assessment. Six months later, seven of the largest French laboratories left Leem to found Initiative Pharma with the ambition of "laying the foundations for a rebuilding".
The responses mobilized are systemic: R&D taxation, regulation, pricing policy, production sovereignty. These are the right topics. One is missing, and it is probably the most decisive for execution:
Who are the leaders tasked with transforming this sector? And does their profile match what the transformation demands?
WHAT THE SECTOR STILL RECRUITS — and why it is insufficient?
The French pharmaceutical industry has long recruited its leaders according to an established model: solid scientific background, linear progression within the sector, mastery of the regulatory framework, culture of process and compliance.
This model worked in a stable environment. It is reaching its limits in the current environment where the "retailization" of healthcare models, pressure on margins, the rise of non-regulated business, and the expectations of exhausted teams call for another type of leadership.
What the brief says | What the process selects |
|---|---|
The transformer | The expert executor |
Comfortable with uncertainty. Result and customer-oriented. Able to navigate between regulated and non-regulated environments. Bearer of a vision capable of bringing teams on board. | Pure sector profile. Linear path in pharma. Mastery of regulatory vocabulary. No apparent vulnerability in the CV. Reassuring. Predictable. |
THE RETAILIZATION OF HEALTHCARE CREATES A NEW PROFILE AND A NEW TYPE OF FRICTION
A fundamental shift is sweeping the sector: healthcare distribution, parapharmacy, nutrition, and wellness models are moving closer to consumer logics. Patient-customer orientation, speed of commercial execution, understanding user behaviors—these skills, forged in FMCG, beauty, or nutrition, are becoming strategic in pharma organizations looking to transform.
These profiles exist. They have an energy, a results culture, and a capacity to engage teams that pharma organizations seek—often without clearly articulating it in their briefs. But importing an FMCG profile into a regulated environment does not happen without friction. And the nature of this friction is precisely what recruitment processes do not know how to anticipate.
FIELD OBSERVATION |
|---|
The friction does not come from the field teams. These teams, often running on empty, lacking a clear vision, and accustomed to organizations that move by slow consensus, quickly recognize these profiles as leaders capable of driving, deciding, and onboarding. The friction comes from above. From the executive committee (comex). From the decision-makers. From the medical and regulatory functions who see someone arriving who does not speak their language, who challenges their reference frameworks, and whose industry legitimacy remains to be proven.
Before any formalized strategic plan, before any presentation to the comex, they built a coalition. They identified internal allies, such as a medical director open to innovation, a CFO sensitive to performance arguments, or an HR director conscious of team fatigue. They worked with these key contacts bilaterally, tested their ideas in informal conversations, and adjusted their discourse without ever deviating from their vision. When the plan reached the comex, it did not arrive alone. It arrived already supported. This is an organizational intelligence that classic recruitment processes do not know how to assess. And it is precisely this intelligence that determines whether a "disruptive" profile succeeds or fails in such a standardized sector. |
THE REAL QUESTION IS NOT REGULATORY, IT IS STRATEGIC
Pharma organizations hesitant to recruit these profiles often raise the same objection: "They will disrupt our regulatory framework." The objection is legitimate. It is not nuanced.
The real tension is not between the profile and compliance. It is between two visions of the sector's future: remaining in a predominantly regulated logic, or accepting that growth challenges are permanently shifting toward the non-regulated sector.
In this second, growing horizon, profiles coming from retail are not troublemakers to be managed. They are accelerators to be protected.
The real question is not: will this profile disrupt the regulatory framework? It is: will they know how to navigate subtly enough to transform without fracturing?
WHAT THIS CHANGES IN THE WAY WE RECRUIT AND ASSESS
The brief must map the internal political terrain and not just the expected skills. A transformative profile in an organization where the comex is not ready to welcome them is a recruitment destined to fail, regardless of the candidate's quality.
The assessment must test the intelligence to navigate the ecosystem, the capacity to build allies before formalizing, to adapt the communication style depending on the interlocutor, and to maintain a long-term vision while managing short-term resistance. This cannot be evaluated through a standard interview.
An internal sponsor is a condition for success, not an accessory. In the missions where these recruitments lasted and produced results, there was always someone on the comex or board who had chosen to support this profile politically. Identifying and securing this sponsor is part of the recruitment work, even before they take office.
French pharma has the resources to rebuild itself. The investments, announced. The institutional will, real. The innovation ecosystem, intact.
What it still underestimates: the profiles capable of executing this transformation do not look like the profiles it is used to recruiting. They come from elsewhere. They think differently. They disrupt, and that is precisely why they are necessary.
Knowing how to identify them, assess them correctly, and create the internal conditions for their success: that is where a large part of the sector's transformation is played out.
—
Laroze Partners — Executive Search Firm
Sources: Leem/PwC 360° Barometer, June 2025 · Initiative Pharma, January 2026 · Usine Nouvelle, December 2024
