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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowIndianapolis-based drugmaker Eli Lilly and Co. this week is marking 150 years since its founding.
Col. Eli Lilly, a trained chemist and Civil War veteran, founded the company on May 10, 1876, in a two-story building near the corner of Meridian and Pearl streets with the goal of creating high-quality medications. Among them was the world’s first commercially available insulin product, in 1923, to treat diabetes, which at the time was a fatal disease. The company has been innovating ever since.
Lilly celebrated the milestone with a “150 Years of Medicine” event on Tuesday, (which you can read more about on page 6A) with former Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning serving as emcee. And on Thursday, Lilly planned to host an event that was expected to draw 22,000 employees from across the world to Indianapolis.
Speakers at Tuesday’s event included Gov. Mike Braun, who lauded Lilly’s successes.
“We are blessed to have this company here in Indiana,” Braun said. “Forty-nine other states would give anything to have a company like Eli Lilly.”
We agree and want to congratulate Lilly on its sesquicentennial. IBJ doesn’t often write about anniversaries, but Lilly’s 150th can’t be ignored. It would be hard to sum up in this space all the ways Lilly has contributed to the city and state since it opened its doors. There’s no doubt the company has been among Indiana’s greatest innovators, employing tens of thousands of Hoosiers and contributing significantly to our state’s economy.
And CEO David Ricks on Tuesday said Lilly isn’t taking its foot off the pedal.
Ricks told the audience the company’s medicine pipeline “is the strongest in our history.”
“This may be the beginning of the biggest sustained upswing in our history,” Ricks said. “It may also be just another peak in a series of peaks and valleys along the way. We don’t get to know which, but we do get to choose how to act. And right now, we’re choosing to reinvest in science like we never have before.”
Also this week, Indiana University released a study measuring Lilly’s economic impact on our state. Its key findings were:
• Lilly’s annual direct operations contributed nearly $15.6 billion to Indiana’s gross domestic product, which accounted for 2.7% of Indiana’s total economic output.
• By 2030, when Lilly’s new LEAP Research and Innovation District facilities in Lebanon are expected to be fully up and running, the company’s Indiana employment footprint will climb to an estimated 52,400 jobs.
• Every direct job at Lilly supports 2.17 jobs with other Hoosier employers (or, every 100 Lilly jobs create 217 jobs with other businesses in the state).
Lilly’s 150th anniversary celebration is a good reminder to public officials that companies like Lilly — companies that grow from small operations into some of the most important in the world — can be cultivated right here in Indiana.
Kudos to Ricks and all his predecessors. We’re excited to see what Lilly does next.•
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