Main Subject - Business

In 1987 I sold my business, South Mountain Company, to my employees (and myself). My sole proprietorship became an employee-owned cooperative corporation. It was a hinge point in the history of the company. Ownership has become available to all employees, enabling people

According to USFDA, a combination product is one composed of any combination of a drug and device; biological product and device; drug and biological product

to own and guide their workplace. The responsibility, the power, and the profits all belong to the group of owners.

Shared ownership and control is our method at South Mountain. “Every employee, an owner” is our intention. More than half of our thirty employees are full

; or drug, device, and biological product and fixed dose combination would include two or more combinations of drug.

Examples of combination products may in

wners. Each time another comes in, and each time a new management invention encourages more voices to be heard, we move steadily toward the goals of democracy, fairness, and transparency. This is not about a sense of ownership or a sense of control. Corey Rosen of the Nat

lude drug-coated devices, drugs packaged with delivery devices in medical kits, and drugs and devices packaged separately but intended to be used together.

onal Center for Employee Ownership once said that giving employees a "sense" of ownership is like giving them a "sense" of dinner. This is the whole meal.

I first contemplated the conversion to find a way to retain long-time valued employees, who wanted to stay in the co

here is enormous increase in the number of combination products entering the market in the recent years. Combination products have proven advantages but fixe

pany but felt they needed more stake than working for an hourly wage. At the time it was both frightening and exciting. I had the power, and the greatest financial and emotional investment; therefore, I had the most to lose. Under my ownership the company had become a via

d dose combinations are still in the process of convincing regulatory authority on their advantages over the single ingredient formulations.

Combination pro

le, profitable entity with a strong reputation. Sometimes, during the early discussions, it felt like control was slipping away, like I was tugging on the reins of a runaway horse. But it occurred to me that perhaps I had the most to gain. Aside from the lure of clearing

ucts have become life saving products for the pharmaceutical companies who doesn’t have many innovative molecules in their product pipeline and have been inc

his new path and seeing where it led, the possibility of shared responsibility and ownership promised new freedoms for me and new achievements for the company. But the full implications of what I was doing were not yet clear to me.

Our ownership system has indeed turned

easingly used in the product life cycle management. Even the companies having product patents are trying to extend their product life cycle through the combi

ut to be an important aspect of the stability of the company. People do tend to stay. But there are other reasons why we are lucky to have made this change. Nearly 20 years later, I am fully convinced that the conversion to employee ownership has been a critical factor in

nation products and maximize the revenues. But the companies involved in this practice are overlooking that they are burdening the patients both economically

the long-term success of our company and an important reason why I think I have the best job in the world. Here are ten reasons why you may wish to consider, sometime soon, sharing the ownership of your business with your employees:

1. Maturity. Once the entrepreneurial

and physically. They need to rightly judge the benefits of the combination products and they have to even look at the risks involved when combining the produ

eap of starting a new business has been achieved without constraints, and a viable company has been established, restructuring to employee ownership can be a natural part of the maturation process.

2. Commitment. Employee ownership encourages a sense of empowerment and p

ts. Some of the combination products were well accepted by physicians while others suffered. Companies involved in development of combination products are fi

omises deeper connections and greater commitment (and length of employment) among the employee owners.

3. Freedom. The potential loss of control for the founder is more than balanced by the new-found freedom that comes with shared responsibility.

4. Participation. If yo

ding difficulty in defining their combination products and facing various challenges from selecting a combination to marketing it.

Following aspects would a

keep the entry fee low enough (we keep ours to "the price of a good used car") full participation will be encouraged.

5. Equity. By using a system of internal capital accounts through which the profit is shared and equity is measured, employee owners can track their sta

dd to the challenges in developing combination products:

Which markets to tap where the combination products can do fairly well?
Which combination prod

e in the company and accumulate a nest egg that they take with them when they depart.

6. Effectiveness. Over 11,000 companies nationally, with 8.5 million employees (and $400 billion in assets held by these employees) have some form of employee ownership. Maybe these com

cts are meaningful and rational?
Which therapeutic categories to select?
Which Combinations can address unmet needs of the patients?
Do combin

anies know something.

7. Legacy. Employee ownership is the ticket to good legacy and smooth transitions. By sharing ownership early on, the difficult question that comes when founders are ready to retire - what to do with this business - is avoided.

8. Justice. The inhe

tions increase the patient compliance?
What would be the developing cost?
How to tackle the risks encountered during combination product developmen

ent injustice of our current economic system (all wealth goes to the shareholders) can be tackled, through employee ownership, by shifting wealth to the real stakeholders, those who actually create it.

9. Productivity. A democratic workplace gives meaning to our work liv

t?

As combination products don't fit into the traditional categories of drugs, medical devices, or biological products, the USFDA is in the process of devel

s and encourages good performance. A happy workforce is a productive one.

10. Accountability. If the people who make the decisions are the people who will also bear the consequences of those decisions, better decisions are likely to result.

In thinking about the dynamic

ping new procedures for reviewing their safety, efficacy and quality.

Professional from academic institutions, pharmaceutical industries, health care indust

of employee ownership, I am reminded of the way the Roman army handled daily rations. Rations were in the form of large loaves of bread, each sufficient to feed two soldiers. This presented a problem, since when the soldiers had little to do, they tended to fight among t

y and representatives from various regulatory agencies are working out to design the regulatory requirements for manufacture and sale of combination products

emselves, particularly over who got the bigger half of the loaf. The Romans developed a nifty solution. They passed a regulation that one soldier had to divide the loaf and the other chose which half to take. Employee ownership is a similarly self-enforcing system. Each o

.

As there is an increasing trend of the combination products companies manufacturing such products should be able to tackle the problems involved in the de

ner's actions on behalf of the others, and the company, are actions on his or her own behalf at the same time.

I understand that employee ownership is not the only way to encourage more responsible and more democratic business practices. But it's clear to me that at Sout

elopment. They need to be wiser in analyzing the market trends and the regulatory requirements.

Companies that provide selfless information through particip

Mountain, due to employee ownership, we've become, at once, better problem solvers and better dreamers. There's a lot to be said for ownership and the responsibility it encourages. As someone once observed, “In the history of mankind, nobody has ever washed a rented car.

tion in industry events and feedback to regulatory authorities would be able to face the challenges and will be successful in developing combination products

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