One year ago, the McKinsey Life Sciences Practice released our RewiR&D collection, which explored how companies could “make more medicines that matter” through meaningful improvements in R&D productivity. That collection highlighted a long-standing truth: Progress across the industry—from medicines to devices, diagnostics, and digital tools—depends not only on efficiently translating science into solutions but also on ensuring those solutions endure and create sustained value.
As we enter 2026, the value creation imperative has taken on new urgency, and with it, a renewed focus on growth and enterprise performance.
Growth as the defining measure of performance
The operating landscape for life sciences companies is shifting in response to geopolitical and regulatory uncertainty, accelerating technological disruption—especially from agentic AI—and evolving investor and consumer expectations. In this environment, growth remains a decisive measure of strategy, execution, and resilience across biopharma, medtech, and the broader ecosystem.
McKinsey analyses show that a one-percentage-point increase in revenue growth creates roughly eight times more shareholder value than the same gain in margin.
Technology, automation, and the next operating frontier
Robotics and embodied AI are advancing rapidly, alongside agentic AI, reshaping how life sciences leaders design operating models and rewire enterprises for greater productivity and growth. We are already seeing examples of deeply embedded advanced robotic systems across life sciences manufacturing and R&D.
Recent McKinsey Global Institute research indicates that humans, AI agents, and robots will increasingly work together across entire workflows—and that AI-powered automation could unlock $2.9 trillion in economic value in the United States alone by the end of the decade. Life sciences executives and their advisory boards will play essential roles in guiding this transformation, aligning strategy, rebuilding workflows, and establishing the necessary capabilities and safeguards.
Yet even as technologies and ways of working evolve, the fundamentals of outperformance remain the same: Winners turn scientific breakthroughs and technological disruptions into advantages, combining internal scientific excellence with external innovation and geographic expansion, even as policy, pricing, and geopolitical pressures intensify.
Expanding the strategic tool kit for growth
Against this backdrop, several trends are poised to expand the strategic tool kit for growth in the year ahead:
- agentic AI, which is beginning to transform enterprise performance by unlocking capacity across R&D, operations, and commercial—and shaping top-line growth by linking scientific, operational, and commercial workflows with unprecedented speed and coordination
- a buoyant innovation ecosystem in Asia, where scientific and process innovations are expanding rapidly, creating new hubs for manufacturing excellence, next-generation modalities, and emerging biotech breakthroughs
- a new wave of consumerism and consumer channels, with rising demand for health, wellness, and medical aesthetics—enabled by digital platforms, new brands, and shifting patient expectations
- new operating models in biopharma and medtech, centered on simplification, cross-functional agility, digital enablement, and enterprise-level scaling of automation systems
Highlights from McKinsey’s latest life sciences insights
To bring these opportunities to life, our newest collection highlights recent articles that illustrate how organizations can capture growth in this new environment:
- “Reimagining life science enterprises with agentic AI” shows how AI can function as a collaborator, not just a tool, freeing 25 to 40 percent of enterprise capacity and capturing three to seven percentage points of incremental growth by rewiring workflows from discovery through commercialization.
- The emerging epicenter: Asia’s role in biopharma’s future demonstrates how emerging science, advanced manufacturing, and novel operating approaches are positioning the region as an increasingly critical source of growth.
- “GLP-1s are boosting demand for medical aesthetics” explains how this blockbuster therapy class is activating new consumer segments, driving entirely new patterns of demand, and reshaping growth in adjacent categories.
- “The transformation imperative: Igniting value creation in medtech” highlights how companies are reinventing their operating models to reignite growth, expand margins, and operate with greater commercial and organizational agility.
- “The hidden traps of business building: A guide for life sciences CEOs” examines how leaders can build new digital-, consumer-, and platform-based ventures that complement core portfolios and create new engines of growth.
- “Clear, credible, compelling: Mastering investor engagement in life sciences” explores how life sciences companies can strengthen investor relations by sharpening their equity stories, reinforcing credibility with proof points, and sustaining confidence through periods of volatility.
Some of these articles show outperformers moving from AI pilots to full enterprise scale—accelerating early discovery, reshaping regulatory submissions, streamlining operations, and transforming commercial engagement—all with humans firmly in the loop. Crucially, technology alone will not deliver growth. Across the industry, companies are simplifying structures, redesigning processes, and sharpening their value creation narratives to link strategy more clearly to performance.
We hope this collection plants seeds of insight and inspiration, along with the tools to cultivate them. Because when science and strategy move together, when AI amplifies human expertise, and when purpose aligns with performance, the benefits extend across the ecosystem to patients, physicians, health systems, and consumers everywhere.
Reinout Goedvolk is a senior partner in McKinsey’s Amsterdam office, and Robert Linden is a senior partner in the Bay Area office. They are global coleaders of McKinsey’s Life Sciences Practice.
This article was edited by Jermey Matthews, an editor in the Boston office.