One or more notices of upcoming biopharma industry conferences arrive in my email every day. I give their agendas a quick glance before deleting them, as they’re seldom in areas I focus on. The vast majority of presenters are plucked from the ranks of top-tier Big Pharma; there’s a seminar from Pfizer, a speaker from Johnson & Johnson, a lecture from Novartis, a presentation from Merck.
On one level, this makes perfect sense. Why wouldn’t you expect to find representatives from the largest companies in the industry speaking about their work? Many of them certainly deserve to be there. However, I think it’s time for meeting organizers to clear out some of the stale air and introduce some fresher voices with new ideas.
I can’t speak for others, but when I go to meetings, I want to learn something new, gain a wider perspective, and do a little networking. As such, I want to hear the best and the brightest, the insightful stories, the innovative approaches that led to success. A little inspiration thrown in the mix never hurts either. Most of what I’ve learned from Big Pharma’s recent misadventures, however, is what not to do. Do you want to hear about critical issues in biopharma only from companies that have exhibited clear and convincing evidence of repeated failures in key segments of their business? Problems include large numbers of key patent expirations (with few replacement drugs lined up), massive fines for illegal marketing, a steady stream of manufacturing woes, unethical behavior by their CEOs and other leaders, over-promised and under-delivered sales numbers, quality control issues, and a litany of other failures that have caused the public to lose faith in the industry.
So why is it that you see meeting programs filled almost entirely with these presenters? The answer lies in having an understanding of who is putting on these forums. My sense is that the majority of biopharma meetings these days are organized by for-profit companies, with a lesser number of conferences set up by industry trade groups and scientific societies. The primary goal of these for-profit meetings is not to ensure that new and innovative ideas get presented; the principal objective is to fill their cash registers. And how do they facilitate doing that? By loading their agendas with speakers who will fly in for free, don’t ask for or need expense reimbursements, and are likely to bring along an Airbus full of coworkers. Perhaps even more importantly, their companies are also likely to book a large amount of exhibition space and to host various parts of the social program. I suspect that speakers are therefore chosen at many of these meetings not necessarily for the expertise they bring, but for the dollars their companies contribute and the seats they fill. Potential presenters that are not willing and able, either directly or indirectly, to subsidize the cost of the meeting are simply not invited. This practice needs to change.
Big Pharma currently finds itself in less-than-stellar circumstances with pipelines
