What to expect from the pharmaceutical industry this year? Honest answer, nobody knows

Every year, around this time, the pharmaceutical industry turns into a room full of oracles. LinkedIn feeds, conference panels, whitepapers, keynote speeches, everyone seems ready to tell you exactly what will happen next. Which technologies will win. Which markets will explode. Which strategies are “the only way forward.”

The funny part? None of us actually knows. And that’s not false modesty. It’s just reality. The pharma industry is influenced by an almost absurd number of variables: science, regulation, geopolitics, supply chains, funding cycles, public opinion, unexpected clinical results, and global events that no model ever really accounts for. Predicting the future with 100% accuracy in this context is impossible, no matter how confident the slide deck looks.

What we can do, though, is observe patterns. One of the clearest patterns right now is the growing weight of small pharma, and biotech, compared to big pharma, which, in many areas, seems to be moving more slowly.

This isn’t something you’ll often see said openly in press releases or investor calls. But anyone working inside the industry knows why this is happening. Large pharmaceutical companies have massive structures. Over time, they’ve accumulated layers upon layers of processes, approvals, committees, and, inevitably, duplicated and even triplicated roles. Decision-making becomes diffused. Clear ownership gets blurred. Speed suffers.

To be fair, this is not about incompetence. It’s the natural outcome of scale. When an organization becomes that large, efficiency and agility are incredibly hard to maintain. Small pharma and biotech, on the other hand, operate very differently. Teams are leaner. Responsibilities are clearer. Decisions are faster. When something doesn’t work, course corrections happen quickly. When something does work, momentum builds fast.

And this is where innovation comes in. Today, most of the real innovation in the pharmaceutical industry is coming from small players. Sometimes they go all the way to market on their own. Sometimes they partner with big pharma. Sometimes they get acquired. But the origin of the innovation, the risk-taking, the unconventional thinking, the early scientific breakthroughs, is increasingly happening outside the big organizations.

Another advantage small pharma has right now is its ability to react to a complicated and unstable geopolitical situation. Regulatory changes, supply chain disruptions, regional conflicts, shifting trade dynamics, these things demand speed and adaptability. Smaller organizations can pivot, relocate, renegotiate, or redesign strategies far more quickly than global giants bound by rigid structures.

All of this leads to an interesting possibility: not a dramatic takeover, not a hostile revolution, but a slow, steady shift of influence. A future where small pharma and biotech continue to gain ground, not by replacing big pharma overnight, but by becoming the engine that drives progress.

For professionals working in small pharma, this moment matters. One of the most underrated advantages of being in a smaller organization is visibility. You don’t just know your own task, you understand the full process. From early development to regulatory strategy, manufacturing considerations, market access, and commercialization. That holistic understanding is becoming a real asset in an industry that increasingly values flexibility, cross-functional thinking, and speed.

So, what should we expect from the pharmaceutical industry this year? Uncertainty, Complexity, Contradictions. But also, opportunity, especially for those close to innovation, close to decision-making, and close to the full picture. And right now, that often means small pharma and biotech.

Not because they can predict the future better. But because they can adapt to it faster.