Big pharmas are reaching the tipping point. How can they survive?

"The global pharmaceutical industry is one of the great success stories in recent history." That's the opening line from management consulting firm A.T. Kearney's report Pharmaceuticals Out of Balance: Reaching the Tipping Point. The industry, the report continues, has created technologies, vaccines, and medicines that have significantly improved people's health and saved countless lives. And the industry's been successful on the business front, too, today generating revenues of more than $700 billion.