The CEO of Merck on Race, Leadership, and High Drug Prices

HBR IdeaCast

Harvard Business Review

Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Communication, Marketing, Business, Business/management, Management, Business/marketing, Business/entrepreneurship, Innovation, Hbr, Strategy, Economics, Finance, Teams, Harvard

4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 19 February 2018

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Kenneth Frazier, the CEO of the pharmaceutical company known as MSD outside of North America, discusses his upbringing and how it influences his leadership as chief executive. He is one of the few African-American CEOs in the Fortune 500, and shot to prominence after resigning from a council advising the Trump White House. Frazier discusses the importance of values in leadership and how Merck thinks about R&D and drug prices.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everyone it's Kurt we need your help with our annual survey this is your last chance to help us get to know you so we can make idea cast even better for you
0:09.8	it's easy just go to HBR.org
0:13.0	podcast survey.
0:15.0	Again, that's HBR.org.
0:17.0	And thanks for listening. Welcome to the HBR IDEA cast from Harvard Business Review. I'm Kurt Nickish in for Sarah Green Carmichael.
0:45.0	Whatever you call the multinational firm, it is a huge one. If you're in the United States or Canada, you know it
0:55.2	as Merck. Everywhere else, it's called MSD. Either way, it's a global pharmaceutical company
1:01.6	with 35 billion dollars of revenue last year.
1:05.0	One of the roughly 70,000 employees is the CEO, Ken Frazier.
1:10.0	He's been in the job for seven years, and he's one of the very few African American
1:15.3	CEOs in the Fortune 500. Last year he prominently resigned from a White House
1:21.0	Advisory Council after US President Donald Trump seemed to make
1:24.8	statements in support of white supremacist who'd rallied in Charlottesville, Virginia,
1:29.6	other CEOs followed Frazier's lead. The president
1:33.2	tweeted in response, now that Ken Frazier of Merck Pharma has
1:36.9	resigned from president's manufacturing council, he will have more time to
1:41.0	lower rip-off drug prices.
1:43.4	All right, so this is all really.
1:45.8	Recently, Frazier sat down with us at a conference table in the company's New Jersey
1:50.6	headquarters.
1:51.6	I'm pleasure and honored to be interviewed for the Harvard Business Review.
1:55.1	Well, we're pleasure and honored that we're sitting down with you.
	...

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