When Pfizer named Martin Mackay head of R&D in October, one of his first moves was to abolish all the committees he believed were blocking the path between good ideas and marketable drugs. What used to be as many as 14 layers of management between scientists and top executives have now been pared about in half, BusinessWeek writes.

Cutting red tape is a key element of his multifaceted plan to overhaul how the drugmaker develops new meds - from generating ideas to managing the trials needed to get them on the market, the mag continues. It’s a strategy he’s been fine-tuning since his predecessor, longtime R&D chief John LaMattina, announced his retirement in May. “I know it’s a bit pompous,” Mackay tells Busyweek. “I really knew what we needed to do differently.”

Wall Street, however, has not been wowed. Pfizer’s stock, the mag points out, has fallen 7 percent since Mackay was promoted. It doesn’t help that he’s associated with a legacy of blunders: He was part of the upper echelon in R&D when Pfizer moved ahead with torcetrapib, a cholesterol remedy, even though safety issues had emerged in early clinical studies. Pfizer dropped the drug late last year. “This was an opportunity to bring in someone from the outside who could breathe in some fresh air,” Jami Rubin, an analyst for Morgan Stanley, tells Busyweek. “It’s disappointing.”

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Hat tip to Pharmagossip