Newsbits

Image Prize to Novo Nordisk

For the second time in less that than ten years Novo Nordisk has been awarded the 'Børsens Nyhedsmagasins Image Prize'. The prize is given to the company with the best image in Denmark. Novo Nordisk scored highest among the 200 participating companies judged by 1,300 Danish business executives. Among the reasons for the lead over its competitors in the competition, the magazine points to Novo Nordisk's superb financial performance and the way in which the company and in particular its president and CEO Lars Rebien Sørensen handled the critical media attention during the recently settled court case relating to pharmaceutical patents in South Africa. Novo Nordisk also won the image prize in 1992.

Novo Nordisk towards the top

In the recently published Business Week's Global 1000, Novo Nordisk has taken a giant leap towards the top. Ranked as number 308 among the 1,000 companies according to market value, Novo Nordisk dramatically improves last year's ranking as number 430 (at that time including the value of Novozymes).
For the second consecutive year General Electric ranks as number one in the analysis, which bases its conclusions on data from Morgan Stanley Capital International Inc of Geneva.

	Innovative InnoLet® First marketed earlier this year, Novo Nordisk's insulin injection device InnoLet® has been named The Most Innovative Injection Device 2001 by the German Pharmacist Association (Bundesverband Deutscher Apotheker). The prize was awarded based on anonymous feedback from German pharmacists who are every year asked about their perception of the most innovative or valuable product of the year. With its unique egg timer-like design InnoLet® is a prefilled insulin injection device aimed at facilitating insulin self treatment for those people with diabetes who for one reason or the other find it difficult to handle traditional pen devices let alone syringes.

Engineers prefer Novo Nordisk

4,500 Danish engineers and engineering students have named Novo Nordisk as their favourite workplace. With almost twice as many votes as the competition's number two, Novo Nordisk is not even close to being equalled by its rivals for the attention of the engineers.
Out of 11 categories, Novo Nordisk came in as number one in nine of them, and as number two in the last two. The winning categories included: Career Opportunities, Corporate Management, Culture, Challenging and Stimulating Work, Salary and Benefits, Prestige, Innovation and Communication. Hearing aid company Oticon won the category Employee Influence while Danfoss came in as number one in Sustainable Development.
The competition was sponsored by the weekly engineering magazine Ingeniøren and its conclusions coincide with a series of initiatives taken by Novo Nordisk to attract new, highly qualified employees to its expanding production sites in Kalundborg, Denmark and elsewhere. However, competition for the best is tough, and engineers belong to one of the groups of employees that can be hard to attract.
"The fact that we have won 'Ingeniørens' image prize means that it will be easier for us to attract engineers. And there is no doubt that we can benefit from being popular among engineers - it has a cumulative effect," says Claus Hasselbalch, manager of Novo Nordisk Staffing.

	Internet drug promotion According to the Financial Times, the European Commission is contemplating to allow pharmaceutical companies to promote certain drugs directly to patients via the Internet. The products include drugs to treat diabetes, asthma and AIDS. The proposal also opens up for a direct Internet-based dialogue between patients and the drug producers. The move of the Commission must be seen in the light of the fact that direct-to-consumer marketing while prohibited in Europe, is quite legal in the US. This means that patients, by looking at companies' American websites, can find drug information that is not available on the same company's European site. A practical example of this can be seen by examining first the 'Diabetes Care' section of Novo Nordisk's US website at www.novonordisk-us.com and comparing with the same section on the company's corporate website at www.novonordisk.com.

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