Watanabe took over the R&D at Eli-Lilly, the critical factor in its profitability was the long R&D time per product to market, which cut into the profitable protected period during which generics could not be created. This severely reduced the initial profits while the company had a monopoly on the drug, and the long term profits gained by creating a commanding market share before competitors could go to market.

             To resolve this, the separation of the two development teams for Zyprexa and Evista was a strategy which overcame the long development tine without violating the strict FDA rules for testing. The cross functional team Watanabe developed for both efficiently overcame the rigidity of the long established team methods which had spread participants over several projects. While any team member worked on the Zyprexa or Evista project he or she was committed to that project only. This resulted in a problem in other projects who then lacked the expertise of the members drafted for the new projects. However, it was profitable, since the two new products were deemed correctly to be potentially highly profitable new products. The time shaved off development by using this team structure far outweighed the losses incurred in other projects (though the people in those projects had trouble seeing it that way.).

             The dedicated heavy team structure worked well, and the fact that the teams were already somewhat cross-functional aided the Zyprexa project when a major setback had to be overcome after a database error was discovered. The description of heavy team structure in chapter 8 worked just as described. In addition, the flexibility of the heavy manager and the autonomous authority of the teams was mostly responsible for the success of both projects. On key factor was the development of the dynamic development schedule which allowed for the marketing strategy of aiming the second drug, Evista, at prevention for Osteoporosis, which placed the product in a great marketing position while shaving precious time off the development cycle by getting the FDA to approve "rapid development" for the product.