By quickly clearing the development pipeline of failing or marginal products, fast-fail strategies release resources to focus on more promising molecules. The Quick-Kill model of drug development demonstrates that fast-fail strategies will: 1) reduce the expected time to market; 2) reduce expected R&D costs; 3) increase R&D productivity. This paper outlines the model and demonstrates the impact of fast-fail strategies. The model is illustrated with costs and risks data from pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical companies.