Barbara Latulippe, Chief Data Officer at Takeda Pharmaceutical Company, speaks with Tracy Gusher, AI, Data, and Automation Leader at EY, in a video interview about value creation, collaborating and co-creating with business, having GenAI as a service and innovative workspaces, key strategic pillars of Takeda, evolving the CDO role, and revolutionizing patient care through collaborations.

Takeda is a leading values-based, R&D-driven global biopharmaceutical company.

Latulippe begins by stating that Takeda has been proactive and has created a value-creation office that oversees two key investment areas. The first is GenAI, which starts with 12 initial use cases, is funded centrally, and has plans for further expansion. They are also leading the development of AI labs focused on exploration and discovery, she adds.

The second area is enterprise data management, which is driven by the need to strengthen the foundation and accelerate a data-driven domain strategy. To align with this model, she mentions reorganizing the team, appointing an enterprise data strategy lead, along with a value creation business strategy lead responsible for four key areas: Commercial, supply chain, corporate functions, and R&D.

Currently, there are 30 value-creation strategies in the pipeline, which are coming from the business side, says Latulippe. Doubling down in strategy acceleration, she mentions having Innovation Capability Centers and moving to Takeda permanent employees who are in Slovakia, Mexico City, and Bangalore.

Sharing her excitement about the data and analytics team being one of the biggest chapters right now, a separate chapter was created to support this vision. But most importantly, she says, it has to align with business strategy, emphasizing the importance of value creation.

The new way Latulippe approaches this at Takeda is by creating MVPs that can be co-designed with the business. After understanding the business value of the use case, the team decides whether to continue or pivot to a different use case.

Takeda has a steering committee to assess the value-driven quarterly and a digital council to show how it can scale. Latulippe states that the role of the CDO is now starting to focus on driving the most value of existing data and understanding what data is needed.

Further, she stresses the need to speak the language of the business. While technologists get excited about the technology, it is brought to life based on the business value it derives.

Moving forward, Latulippe mentions creating GenAI-as-a-service and loves that it has an R&D approach. She shares that the head of data strategy focused on all early opportunities, and Takeda created data and AI labs.

Along with that, innovative workspaces have been created in a federated environment, which Latulippe refers to as a lean governance model. Sharing an outcome of the collaboration between IT, business, and partners, she mentions beating the challenge of reducing time to onboard external data sets by over 50%.

One of the key pillars of Takeda’s strategy is its ways of working — bringing business partners to the core and understanding how to help them accelerate. She notes that there is a highly efficient working model in place between the business and data analytics teams, as well as Takeda.ai.

The other key strategy area, says Latulippe, is thinking of data as a reusable and consumable product, encouraging the concept of data producers and consumers. Takeda has created over 500 data products and is enabling business units to opt in and promote data products in a marketplace. Additionally, she mentions starting the term “data product owners” to drive accountability through governance processes.

Thereafter, Latulippe advises having an excellent data management foundation and data quality. She maintains that these become an enabler for self-service, trusted data models, and data access. Without getting the basics of data right, one cannot become a leader in the GenAI space, says Latulippe.

As the role of CDOs continues to evolve, the disruptive impact of GenAI has been transformative, reshaping organizations both within corporations and in personal lives, says Latulippe. She affirms spending the majority of her time working with the business to ensure alignment with business strategy and to drive maximum value to build the data ecosystem.

Furthermore, Latulippe believes that Takeda can revolutionize patient care by accelerating and enhancing external collaborations. For instance, she discusses being engaged in a program in Europe where multiple hospitals are collaborating on data exchange to better serve patients.

By keeping the patient at the center, it becomes clear that expanding these ecosystems is essential, says Latulippe. She concludes that the role of a CDO now is about strengthening internal partnerships while actively pursuing external opportunities.

CDO Magazine appreciates Barbara Latulippe for sharing her insights with our global community.