Power of Biopharma Market Research: From Academic Roots to Strategic Insights

Welcome to the Brand Builder Blog Series, where we speak with insights professionals around the biopharma industry about their experiences. Our very own Dan Callahan speaks with Julia Chornak, a veteran of in-house biotech insights teams, about her path through academia, sales and consulting and how those experiences have shaped her current role. Read on as Julia shares her story about translating different skills to her insights role and where she focuses her energy to make an impact on brands and their various stakeholders.

From Academia to Biopharma Insights: A Unique Career Path

Dan Callahan:

I would love to hear where you started and how you made it into your current insights role.

Julia Chornak:

I feel like it's a joke within the community when you think about market research, analytics, insights adjacent, that there's no straight path. After my time doing neuroscience research in the academic setting, I skipped over to a sales role in a completely different industry. I was grateful that I did that because, even though it wasn't the right fit, it helped me build up my business acumen.

Working in business and education fostered passion and interest in two things. One is the communication of scientific information. Making sure that topics either inspire further conversation or change, to be very engaging with how you communicate information. And the other is asking good questions. So I'm very happy with where I am right now that I get to do that every single day. I get to spend pretty much every day hearing from different stakeholder groups making sure I advocate for their voices. I am able to harness my scientific medical knowledge and bring it into a role developing solutions for patients.

Dan Callahan:

I know you were in neuroscience and I know some of your work has touched on neuroscience. But I would love to hear some of those skills outside of hard science, those academia skills that you pull into your role as an insights professional today.

Julia Chornak:

I'm excited to talk about this one.  It is challenging today for students and professionals in the academic space to translate their skills in a sellable way in the industry. But there are so many commonalities. Academia trains you how to think. And what I mean by that is we try to lead with question and a purpose - hypotheses that we test, like every day in market research.  And those other big purposeful aims in academia: How do you make a sustainable lab environment, demonstrating your purpose in the scientific community, and collaborating across different labs and scientific disciplines? That's something that I think that this industry continues to need.

The Power of Communication in Biopharma Market Research

Dan Callahan:

You talked earlier about those two principles of strong communication driving change and asking good questions. Can you share some success stories and examples where insights have been used to make an impact?

Julia Chornak:

I recall a situation where some material was just not resonating with market research participants. In fact, they were struggling to interact with it. Really, nothing was hitting. But it wasn't because of an issue with the content of the material itself. So, the results of the project described not only success of the material, but where does it have to live? How do we have to set it up? How do we have to prepare both the communicator and listener?

I think we're always tempted to just provide information for inhalation. But instead, providing a space for interaction. And in market research, it can often be the surprise insights that really give a campaign, message, or strategic decision life and, ultimately, make it very successful.

Dan Callahan:

I love that idea of surprise insights. Because as much as we do that up front work that you talked about earlier to define our objectives and document our hypothesis and so forth, often insights fall outside of that of that structure and giving ourselves space to be surprised and to give ourselves permission to act on those surprises. I think that's one of the balances that we always have to strike is as insights professionals.

Julia Chornak:

Totally! I think it happens in almost every project where you hear something surprising, and you have to make the decision and prioritize. Is this something that's going to influence the rest of the project or is that a signal to save, to pursue in another research project?

We see it in the conclusion of most scientific white papers: “Further research is warranted.” I know it's something not every stakeholder wants to hear, but it's almost always the case if you design your research correctly. Yes, we need to be answering our main questions. But hopefully you're ending your research with some new ones.

Leveraging Biopharma Market Research Insights to Impact Stakeholders

Dan Callahan:

That's exactly right. And it's going back to your point about asking good questions. The deepest insights almost inevitably could lead to good questions. And that's how we can often add value, by taking our stakeholders from one step in terms of insights and also ask the right questions that help carry them to the to the next step.

Talk a little bit about some of the challenges that you face in terms of success and how we can successfully impact our stakeholders with insights. And what steps have you taken to overcome some of those challenges.

Julia Chornak:

The first answer is a little less interesting, but realistically, resourcing and logistics can be huge challenges for all of us.

But I think another one is actually something I've been focusing my growth on, which is knowing how and when to challenge beliefs with grace.  What we call the facts or findings may be more objective. The data, all of it together, form these insights and to inform these recommendations and conclusions. That's where I want other people to come to the table and converse and reengage with the data.

I've been wrong before. Everyone's been wrong about how we've seen data. There’s a challenge of understanding and compromises to be made even when you have your own emotional stake in the game, if there's a problem you're really passionate about.

Dan Callahan:

To break those two apart in terms of weighting or characterizing insights, do you have some heuristics or some tips on how to up-weight or down-weight in a way that it always doesn't come down to, “This finding was spoken by the highest percentage of respondents?”

Julia Chornak:

Holding conversations in an objective question and answer framework can sometimes feel very dissatisfying and two dimensional. But as long as that's essentially the framework, the guard rails in which you're standing, you can also lay out different paths.

For the headlines that are more interesting or provocative, it’s back to basics. We have one-on-one conversations with the people who care about that information. And we gather the “honest” feedback from a more neutral or outside perspective. Both can shed light. on something I don't see. Or we need further research.

So, I think to summarize it in one word – balance. Fulfilling the objectives and also having continuing conversations after establishing those guardrails. As long as folks that don't feel like they're getting caught off guard. I think inspiring people to interact with data and information and to ask questions can be really fun.

Encouraging Interaction: How to Make Biopharma Data Engaging

Dan Callahan:

I love the way you put that in terms of inspiring people to interact with data. And we've all been in environments that have been data-driven and are not terribly inspirational. How have you created that inspirational environment where people are excited to interact and ask questions?

Julia Chornak:

I always try to find opportunities to have others engage with data. Unfortunately, something we often don't have time to educate folks in this area.  But, I believe that if you can't explain what's behind data in a basic sense, how you got the information, it's usually not very impactful or useful. It goes back to the balance of prioritizing those main objectives the side quests that are really interesting.

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