Novartis logic: how to double gains

I have read very ambitious news from Swiss drugmaker Novartis which said its pharmaceutical division could produce 14 or more blockbusters by 2017 as it bets on the success of its oncology pipeline, and heart and respiratory drugs.

Novartis said it had 139 projects in clinical development including more than 73 new molecular entities spread across a wide area of diseases, in a statement published ahead of an investor event in Boston later on Thursday.

As I understood the calculation is very simple: 139 projects with success rate 10% have to generate 13.9 blockbusters. Right? I do not know where this magic number 10% for success rate come from but let’s proceed with this logic one step forward – I would propose how to double the amount of blockbusters – right! – just to double the amount of projects to 280! So simple!