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Discovery of Lipitor — the Biggest Blockbuster Drug in the Pharmaceutical Industry
After the Philippines, Mr. Gonzalez was moved to the US where he joined Warner-Lambert (W-L). W-L had just made the decision to move from a Diversified Company to a pure Pharmaceutical Company. W-L, Inc. had 83 Human Resources professionals that were not Pharma people, they were Consumer Company people. Mr. Gonzalez was asked to manage this group during the transition.
After securing initial approval of the R&D budget from $283M to $1B, Mr. Gonzalez designed the Pharmaceutical HR organization and started to hire Pharma HR professionals. The existing HR professionals were strongly opposed to the change. Mr. Gonzalez received significant internal resistance. However, he continued the build out by approving hires one by one. The work Mr. Gonzalez and his team did in building the new R&D organization was recognized as foundational to the discovery of Lipitor — the biggest blockbuster drug in pharmaceutical history, generating over $130 billion in sales over its lifetime.
The decision to increase the R&D budget from $283M to $1 billion was one of the most consequential investments in pharmaceutical history. It enabled Warner-Lambert's research teams to pursue multiple drug candidates simultaneously — including atorvastatin, which became Lipitor. The organizational infrastructure Mr. Gonzalez helped build provided the human capital foundation that made this discovery possible.
