Tony Page spent 14 years in US military intelligence before moving into pharma and biotech. He is now SVP of Insight Analytics at Within3, where his work focuses on competitive intelligence, KOL mapping, and insights management.
In the following interview, Page discusses his military intelligence background, why he sees parallels with pharma decision-making, and how companies can apply more structured approaches to market intelligence, launch planning, and near-real-time insights.
Please give us an overview of your career in military intelligence
My first experience with real-time intelligence in a dynamic environment came when I served as the intelligence officer in an Airborne Infantry Regiment, which included multiple deployments.
From there, I was selected for strategic intelligence and went on to study at the National Intelligence College – the equivalent of the National War College – a multi-agency graduate school designed to train intelligence executives. I earned a master’s degree in Strategic Intelligence, with a specialization in early warning and counterterrorism.
After that, I held various national-level assignments related to technology forecasting, early warning, and national security. I also served in an overseas embassy – the largest in the world – and had the opportunity to brief Presidents on two occasions.
What prompted your move from military intelligence into pharma and biotech?
I moved into pharma because it struck me as an ideal environment for applying intelligence approaches. Information is critical to successful product development and launch, and there are high economic risks when there is a lack of clarity.
I first moved into competitive intelligence and ran a CI company on the commercial side for more than a decade. From there, I spun off a technology company that applied counterterrorism approaches to KOL mapping.
I then worked for Within3 for five years, where we were trying to produce a broader insights management platform. KOL mapping was part of that, but the larger goal was to help customers make better decisions.
Looking back across your military career, what key lessons about intelligence, risk, and decision-making do you still carry with you today?
One of the key lessons I still carry with me is that intelligence and insight processes need to be managed proactively and organized in a way that supports the strategy and tactics of the organization. That does not happen organically.
Ultimately, it is all about supporting decision cycles and decision makers, even if those things are not always explicitly recognized.
It also has to be a continuous process. Intelligence needs to push information forward, and that information has to be actionable – and trustworthy enough for people to act on.
You were the first person in the U.S. military to publish on Early Warning Intelligence. Can you tell us about that work, and why it mattered?
That work was really about the need to be proactive. Intelligence has to think beyond the questions to ensure the organization is not blindsided by things they didn’t know enough to ask about. It’s about guardrails, as well as watching for specific things.
What does “early warning” mean in a pharma context, and what kinds of signals should companies be watching for?
First, companies in general are myopic. They need to look beyond the obvious and question what they think are facts and assumptions. In the military, that’s normal.
There should be a plan to monitor key parts of the environment. Some possibilities can be anticipated and can be intentionally watched, and this can be tied to pre-prepared contingency plans.
There are plenty of examples of companies missing key insights and stumbling into obstacles they should have seen, or failing to react effectively. This includes in early clinical development, as well as during and post-launch.
Having worked with industry leaders for the past 20 years, which lessons from military intelligence have proved most useful in pharma – and which have been hardest to translate?
Companies in general still don’t grasp that “intelligence” is a distinct management process. It’s a profession. There are methods, frameworks, and tools.
It can’t be optimized when it’s everybody’s second or third job, or when there is no organizational construct to orchestrate activities beyond individual silos of responsibility.
You’ve adapted the idea of “decision cycle time” for pharma. Why is that concept so important?
Pharma strategy is often too static: plan, execute, react. In a military context, “no plan survives contact with the enemy.” Plans are always just a starting point, and executing is all about adapting to achieve the goal.
Intelligence is hard-wired into execution of the plan. Nothing happens without intelligence, or how can you make good decisions?
If it’s not organized, decision makers get information too late to figure out what to do. You end up in crisis reaction mode when you could have been proactive and maneuvered.
In the military there’s a concept of C3I – command, control, communications and intelligence – that’s all about enabling commanders to maneuver quickly. That’s critical to getting resources to the right place at the right time.
Where do pharma companies most often go wrong when trying to gather, interpret, and act on market or competitor intelligence?
They are poorly organized and intelligence is not integrated well enough into planning and action. But it’s getting better – slowly.
How do you see AI changing the way companies gather and use near-real-time insights – and what are companies getting wrong?
AI is not a productivity tool. It’s also not a plug-and-play enterprise tool. AI solutions need to be built for purpose to address specific problems.
Too many companies are building very general “AI systems” without first thinking through the problems and objectives. Budgets are often justified based on “productivity savings,” which misses the whole upside of AI to drive better decisions.
Productivity initiatives also create internal moral concerns. The human aspect can’t be ignored.
Newsletters
Receive the latest pharmaceutical news, personalities, education, and career development – weekly to your inbox.
