Respect is the core value of the company and it permeates across every employee: Sintetica

Over the past decades, healthcare has seen good innovations designed to enhance life expectancy and quality of life. Innovation is becoming crucial since healthcare is troubled with improved quality, access, efficiency, waste elimination, and lower costs.

Sintetica established in 1921 is located in Switzerland. It is a pharmaceutical company that provides injectable anaesthetics and analgesics to patients across the globe, through innovative science and excellence in development, production and marketing.

The company employs 300 people with an average of 41 years from 29 different countries in the world. Sintetica is located in Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Italy and United Kingdom. Its headquarters is in Mendrisio, Switzerland, where among others, innovation department employees 15% of total work force.

In the beginning of 2012, the company started a global division, the first international corporate structure.  The global division was tasked with pursuing international growth under two distinct models, being a B2B licensing strategy and somewhat later a B2C strategy in select markets.

Under the B to B model, Sintetica works on licensing top brands to its partners with whom it shares value. Above all the values are people and business relationships. As such, all the firms’ partners must meet strict ethical criteria and share Sintetica’s innovation driven ‘quality without compromise’ value proposition. This was the most critical and difficult challenge the company had to  face since beginning its internationalization efforts, however I am proud to say that we have been very successful.

At present, Sintetica has submitted 350 product registrations in over 100 different countries via the network of partners the firm has built over the last five years. The first phase of expansion covered North, Central and South America, South East Asia, and the Pacific.

There is significant growth of the company in the US, and some more good returns in the Pacific. YOY Global Division growth is exceeding 200%, consolidating the impressive growth stream of the last years.

Sintetica is fully committed to innovating therapies and drugs in local anesthesia, pain management and neuro modulation. Augusto  Mitidieri, CEO said,“As such, we move forward with passion and competence in the full respect of people and the environment. All our efforts and resources are focused to become leader in these fields by developing novel medicine and better treatment options for physicians and patients worldwide.”

The company talks about leadership  in the market and tells, “To achieve this leadership by innovation in the context of global growth, we consider strategic partnering and business development the key factors”. Global division is therefore focusing on high speed robust partner selection and affiliation in every country of the world. It is determined to offer a dynamic portfolio of selected branded medicines, developed to answer unmet clinical needs, to build sustainable and long lasting alliances.

When asked how Sintetica is unique from its competitors Augusto  Mitidieri said, “Respect is the core value of the company and it permeates across every employee. The concept of respect is divided into three well-defined directions. It is expressed in relation to its employees, enhancing the different characteristics of each one. Whether for work or as an individual, through activities which create a pleasant environment in which to work and express themselves.”

Augusto Mitidieri says that as a corporate CEO he has complete responsibility over all the sites and affiliates of the company, and he sees his role as defining the strategy and vision of the organization, following the strategy implementation through to execution. Innovation is not only about the products, but also about management style and organization. Getting this right is of the key elements of the company’s long-lasting success. That is the reason for him implementing an innovative organization model, which he called “Human centered organization”, based on responsibility and meritocracy more than hierarchy upon rigid, closed and internal structures.The company follows one approach- increasing people’s sense of responsibility with regards to clear objectives, by exercising greater delegation and autonomy in the management of their duties.

Sintetica feels that managers, therefore, are moving from a role of command and control to a more coaching one, in order to manage people, enhance talents, through delegation and accountability for results, and to reward their merit. The growing complexity and the company marked growth rate form the background for the ongoing organization process. Managers are moving their mindset from the control of activities and how these activities are carried out, to an approach based on the control of results and accountability for results, so as to create peripheral decision-making autonomy, based on the conscious risk assumption.

In the following paragraphs Augusto Mitidieri speaks about his journey and company developments:

To sustain and encourage the change, I designed a novel model of governance, open, dynamic and inclusive, with the scope to maintain continuous adherence between the strategy and the operations on going, adapting the one to the others and vice-versa with all the organization involved.

Inter-functional, interconnected and multi-level teams (called routines), supported with digital tools and apps, have been created and are operating to accomplish this critical task. The Inter-functional Management Routines (IMR) consist of groups of people whose level of responsibility is not necessarily homogeneous, coming from heterogeneous functions, able to harmonize operations with the strategy in the hinge sectors for the development and growth of Sintetica.

Basically, an IMR pool decides and acts “easily” by continuously combining strategy and operations, and maintaining a live coordination throughout the entire organization. They reach an horizontal dimension thanks to interfunctionality and the exchange of decisive information; but also a vertical dimension, thanks to the multilevel composition and the mechanism of the peripheral decisional autonomy present in the organization. Rebuilding strategy and operations means acting, changing one or the other, correcting routes, abandoning paths, all in the shortest time possible and with the highest involvement of responsibility in the organization. The expected result is maximum agility.

Let’s consider strategy as a band drawn in space and time. Operations chase it from below, cross it, move away from it. The goal of IMR is to lean on the two bands and pull the one diverging towards the correct position. Continuously operating, in order to make the operations adhere to the strategy, but also bending the strategy to operations, if necessary. Flowing of critical information is the essential condition for the proper functioning of IMR.

I believe in a company culture that promotes creativity and informed risk taking. In this respect, it must also promote a good feeling for all employees that work here, who should always feel safe when they are in work.

Making Sintetica a great place to work is my firm belief, something that is very much a part of the company DNA. I consider our people to be the company’s core resource. That is why I can trust those who work in my organization to open to change and drive the innovation in management process in the long-term.

We have built up our international network and have done most of the legwork to register our products in over 100 different countries, and over the next five years we should see these efforts bear fruit and our products launched in many of these countries. Thus, with network of partners who share our ‘quality first’ value we should be able to maintain and expand our current innovation driven value proposition significantly over the coming five years.

Moreover, one radical innovation in the field of pain relief after surgery is under final stages of development. The potential of this innovation could be disruptive all over the world and could enhance the way pain is managed in hospital and at home after surgery.

“Our people are the biggest asset.”

“Sintetica is a pharmaceutical company delivering injectable anaesthetics and analgesics to patients worldwide, through innovative science and excellence in development, production and marketing.”