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TBI Breakfast session season back in full swing with a focus on Canada's biotechnology industry's leaders

Kicking off National Biotech Week, The Biotechnology Initiative used its September 17th breakfast meeting as a platform for both the launch of its newest program, the TBI mentorship program, as well as introduction to CELL-A Management study a unique CEO feedback questionnaire conducted by Koenig & Consultants Inc.

As part of CELL – A Management Study, Koenig & Consultants Inc. interviewed 23 life science managers from across the country posing questions on what skills and experiences make for good leaders. The goal of the management study according to presenter Arti Sinha was to explore “Canadian Excellence in Leadership in Life Sciences,” or CELL for short. Sinha gave a summary of the study’s findings and elaborated on some of the challenges industry leaders are facing.

The study initially set out to learn more about the management approaches and systems used by Canadian biotech CEO’s within four areas: Strategy, Business Development, Communication and Leadership. In her presentation, she used CEO’s from various companies interviewed as case studies to demonstrate excellence in each of these four focus areas: Rimon Therapeutics CEO Michael May for strategy, Xenon Pharmaceuticals CEO Simon Pimstone for leadership, Thallion Pharmaceuticals Inc. CEO Lloyd Segal for communication, and Kane Biotech Inc. CEO Gord Froehlich for marketing.

In terms of challenges, not surprisingly lack of money was at the top of the list, but geographic situation and the current Canadian business environment, especially its differences from both the U.S. and European environments, were also mentioned.

According to Sinha, the findings indicate that an excellent CEO leads with a vision, developing strategic objectives from it that are regularly and systematically updated and applied to corporate strategy. Not unexpectedly, she found that these leaders also have a systematic approach to setting individual goals, by which they appraise their company’s performance.

“They are able to apply and implement excellent external and internal communication, and build the company’s product portfolio on verified customer needs,” she said.

Using the results of the study Koenig & Consultants have moved on to the next stage, launching the CELL ™ survey. CELL™ is a pan-Canadian survey, based on the management study’s findings, looking in detail at the management practices among the Canadian Life Sciences Industry.

This presentation was followed by the official launch of the mentorship program with TBI mentorship and membership chair Jill Osborne joined at the podium by two other members of the mentorship program team Iris Fung and Carolyn Rayfield. Introduced at previous meetings the Mentorship program was created to address identified gaps in the biotech industry related to human capital, and to help bridge science and business.

Rayfield got the presentation underway with a highly participative and interactive activity where participants gathered into groups of eight, with each group compiling a collective resume. Each table was given a facilitator who would compile a list of all the skills and talents of the individuals present at each table. These skills fell included a summary of experiences, as well as a list of hard and soft skills. This ten minute activity lead to a ton of laughs, enthusiasm and some friendly competition between various groups in making up their collective résumé’s. One interesting point made in the zestful competition was the number of languages each group could speak, with one group claiming to speak as many as 28 languages! Both fun and informative, the sharing session managed to accomplish another task, as participants were self identified as both mentors and teachers and ideal candidates for the program.

Both Osborne and Fung followed this activity up by discussing the value of mentoring, the opportunities participants could garner from the new program, as well as information on the structure, registration dates and how to get involved.

“This is a unique industry (biotech), which requires many disciplines coming together to sustain business. Employers often complain there is a skill shortage and Canada’s biotech industry has identified mentoring to fill this void,” stated Osborne adding that this is why TBI has created this program as a means to facilitate a way to overcome these challenges.

Online applications officially opened Sept. 17 and the first round of applications will close on Oct. 22, 2009. Matches are determined based on the interests of the protégé, experience of the mentor, desired involvement and proximity. Already, more than 100 business and science professionals have pre-registered. Further information on the program can be found on the website at www.ontbi.org/mentorship

The next TBI breakfast takes place Thursday October 15th at Metro Hall.