Since joining Lilly in 1999, Jim Parshall has held various technical and leadership positions in manufacturing, IT, and product development. In each of his roles, he has championed disruptive innovation to create significant business impact within the 146-year-old pharmaceutical company. Assuming his current role in 2019, Jim is responsible for identifying, evaluating, and executing external digital health opportunities to support Lilly’s key therapeutic areas.
Prior to his external innovation role, Jim was Lilly’s Director of Software Device Solutions, where he recruited and led a talented and energized team that was passionate about leveraging digital health to improve patient outcomes. This team delivered Lilly’s first Class I app to market in less than one year after project start and received FDA clearance on the company’s first Class II app. Jim has enjoyed serving on boards for small businesses and industry associations. His book, Applying S88: Batch Control from a User’s Perspective, a guide on implementing modular software for manufacturing, continues to influence projects, operations, and thinking worldwide.
Jim earned a B.S. in electrical engineering from Kettering University and an M.S. in electrical engineering from Purdue University. Before joining Lilly, Jim worked as a lead process and automation engineer at Ben & Jerry’s Homemade, where he learned that eating one’s own mistakes could actually taste good.