The answer is Joe Jimenez. When he was first named to run the Novartis pharmaceutical business in 2007, Jimenez liked to talk about key account management, which is how a packaged-goods company views its relationship with a retailer. That wasn’t terribly surprising, given that he had spent eight years at Heinz, where he oversaw the introduction of green ketchup for kids, among other things.

Somehow, the analogy still stands, in so far as speed is of the essence. Recently promoted to succeed Dan Vasella as the drugmaker’s ceo, Jimenez is still reaching back to his consumer products days for lessons on running Novartis. With consumer packaged goods, “decisions have to be made quickly because the market moves quickly,” he tells Bloomberg News. But drugmakers have long development lead times, which “tends to slow decision-making in areas where it doesn’t need to.”

Hmmm… Just shake and pour?

Hat tip to PharmaGossip