Novo Nordisk Lost the First-Mover Advantage: When the Market Punishes Friction and Rewards Certainty
For months, the dominant narrative surrounding GLP-1 drugs for weight loss was based on a simple idea: the first to launch captures the market. Novo Nordisk was that first player. However, the market rarely rewards the story and almost always rewards execution.
The stark and elegant signal appears when market share changes hands. According to CNBC, despite being the first to launch a GLP-1 for weight loss, Novo’s market share has eroded, and today the company captures about 40% of the market. Concurrently, its competitor Eli Lilly has gained ground. A superficial reading is “stronger competition.” A more useful take for a CEO, CFO, or sales leader is this: leadership is sustained when offerings reduce friction and make outcomes credible, repeatable, and defensible.
The Myth of the First-Mover Advantage Breaks When the Customer Buys Certainty, Not History
Being first helps to open a category but does not close it. Once a market gains validation, customers stop buying the “discovery” and start purchasing something much colder: perceived certainty. In a product that promises weight loss, the buyer’s mind doesn’t operate on corporate narrative; it operates on practical calculation. The real internal question (without needing to write it out) is whether the result will arrive consistently, with minimal disruptions, and with the lowest total cost of adoption.
When CNBC reports that Novo now captures around 40% despite its initial advantage, what we see is a symptom, not the disease. The symptom is the erosion of share. The disease is usually a mix of two forces.
The first force is accelerated commoditization: once there are multiple players with comparable offers, the "I was first" mantra becomes irrelevant. Customers no longer compare against “nothing”; they compare against “another valid alternative.” At this moment, differentiation ceases to be a message and becomes a system: availability, continuity of use, patient experience, payer relations, and a supply chain that doesn’t fail at the precise moment the customer decides to continue or abandon.
The second force is the redistribution of power. In healthcare, the final buyer is not always the sole decision-maker. There are prescribers, insurers, reimbursement systems, and coverage criteria. Each link introduces friction and thus opportunities for a competitor to win with a proposal that reduces steps, uncertainty, or time.
In marketing, this translates into something uncomfortable: positioning isn’t defended with campaigns; it’s defended with an experience that makes changing costly, annoying, or risky. If the market is shifting, someone is ensuring that change feels safer or less expensive.
Market Share Drops When Friction Rises Faster Than Perceived Value
In high-demand categories, it’s tempting to attribute everything to price or advertising. This approach is comfortable because it’s measurable, but it fails when the product already has massive notoriety. The real engine behind share loss is often accumulated friction.
Friction is not an abstract concept. It encompasses everything that stands between the customer and the outcome: the effort to obtain the product, the continuity of treatment, variability in access, overall financial cost, and the risk of process interruptions. In a weight loss therapy, interruption is not an operational detail; it’s a direct blow to the perception of “this works for me.” If the customer perceives the path as unstable, their willingness to pay diminishes, and their openness to alternatives increases.
Therefore, when it’s reported that Novo, despite being a pioneer, now captures around 40%, this figure suggests that the market is not rewarding historical merit but present execution. And present execution, in massive health markets, tends to be measured across two parallel boards:
1. Access Board: How easy it is to start and maintain treatment under real conditions, not in presentations.
2. Trust Board: How robust the perception is that the result will be sustained over time.
Competition doesn’t need to “be better at everything.” It just needs to be better at the point where most customers are lost. This point is almost always about continuity and experience. Here lies a critical point for commercial leaders: when the product is strong but the customer journey is fragile, the market slips away just the same.
The typical mistake of incumbents is treating this as a communication issue. They invest in explaining, educating, persuading. Meanwhile, the competitor simplifies the path or makes perceived success more probable. In terms of conversion, the market is won by making saying yes the path of least resistance.
The Real War in GLP-1 is a War of Total Offering, Not Molecules
The news cited by CNBC discusses the scale of Novo's issues and Eli Lilly's advances. In business terms, this often means that the category has entered its most costly phase: when products are known, and it’s time to build defenses.
In this phase, the unit of competition shifts from the isolated product to the total offering: everything surrounding the product that defines whether the customer adopts, sustains, and recommends it. In regulated sectors, this total offering includes elements that marketing doesn't fully control but leadership can prioritize.
To understand this, it’s necessary to observe the dynamics of power. The final customer wants results with minimal sacrifice. The healthcare system wants cost predictability and clear rules. The prescriber wants clinical trust and a process that doesn’t drain administrative energy. The company that turns this collective into a seamless experience captures share.
When a competitor gains share, they're likely doing one of these three things better than you:
- Elevating Perceived Certainty: Not only promising but also reducing the feeling of risk around the path.
- Reducing Wait Time: Accelerating start, replenishment, continuity.
- Reducing Effort: Fewer steps, less paperwork, fewer interruptions.
The most important point is that none of these levers are solved by an isolated discount. Competing on price in a high-value category is the shortcut that destroys margins and leaves you without the budget to fix what truly makes you lose.
If Novo is witnessing erosion despite its initial advantage, the message for any company with a winning product is brutally clear: the market is no longer evaluating your innovation; it’s evaluating your delivery system of value. When the system fails, the customer migrates even if the product is still good.
The Takeaway for Marketing and Pricing Leaders: Market Share is Defended by Making the "Yes" Obvious
From my position in sales and pricing, the takeaway is not “do more branding.” It’s “make the offer so solid that the customer feels reckless abandoning it.” This requires discipline and unpopular decisions.
Firstly, defending share demands identifying where real conversion breaks down. Not in the advertisement, not in declared intent, but at the exact point where adoption stalls: access, continuity, coverage, replenishment. The organization that measures that complete funnel—from prescription to sustained adherence—has a structural advantage.
Secondly, high-value pricing is not sustained by whim. It is sustained when the customer feels they are paying for a probable outcome, not for hope. If the market perceives that the result is less certain due to operational friction, the high price stops seeming "premium" and starts seeming like "risk." When price is perceived as risk, comparison with the competitor becomes immediate.
Thirdly, competitive defense in this type of category resembles engineering more than advertising. It requires financing capabilities not visible in a commercial but felt in use: continuity, support, clarity of processes, and a narrative that promises consistency, not magic.
The 40% figure is a wake-up call for any leader who confuses leadership with inertia. The first-mover advantage is a temporary window. When it closes, only two assets matter: the ability to deliver results with high reliability and the ability to reduce friction until the customer perceives that changing is a step backward. Commercial success is built by designing strategies that reduce friction, maximize perceived certainty of outcome, and enhance willingness to pay, creating truly irresistible offers.
