As a Pfizer Global R&D representative, I attended hundreds of conferences over the span of 28 years. There are a variety of reasons that I can think of as to why I decided to attend a particular conference or event related to my niche. It’s not always just about the information presented.

Networking/Deal-making & Finding Outsourcing Partners

One of the first and foremost reasons to attend these conferences is networking with other professionals and peers in your industry. Trading business cards with people and making new contacts can be of huge benefit down the road. As they say it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. (But what you know is still pretty important.) At a good conference, I would get to talk to your peers from other big pharmaceutical companies and learn why they were there. I would also try to catch up and with colleagues from other divisions of my company, such as commercial manufacturing, marketing, licensing & development. I also would meet colleagues from other disciplines, whom I would never otherwise get a chance to meet within the normal, day-to-day company environment.

At Contract Pharma’s Contracting & Outsourcing Conferences, which I’ve attended over the years, I have been able to network with other pharma company peers and also been able to find companies to outsource some clinical manufacturing activities. I have also been able to talk to peers to get a conversational barometer or a ‘vote of confidence’ about a contract service provider I was planning to do business with. One year at that conference, I found a company to do some transdermal proof of concept work; that company did a great job in accomplishing the goals that we had outlined.

Climb the Ladder

Networking with senior executives of other pharma companies also helped me to understand how they viewed my own company. These conversations usually yield a unique perspective, not one published or publicized in any fashion in a written article or a blog. Years ago, I met George Bickerstaff, the chief financial officer of Novartis, at a conference at Harvard Business School where we shared a roundtable at an India-centric meeting. George and I became very good friends ever since. I got to learn so much from him about finance and how it all relates to pharma deal-making. George is now a managing director at CRT Capital at Stamford, CT, a very successful entrepreneur.

At the same conference, I got to meet and share the podium with Azim Premji, founder of Wipro, an IT firm in India. Azim has been called as the Bill Gates of India and has been one of the primary architects of India’s IT revolution. I truly believe that the networking has a positive snowballing effect, leading to many more opportunities in the professional arena. I have had many other opportunities to participate in Asia-centric roundtables, ever since, meeting and networking with execs from Asian companies that were looking for opportunities in the U.S. and vice-versa.

I was invited to give a talk at McCarter & English, a law firm in Boston. My talk was attended by about 50 or so delegates from Boston area. In the audience were Mrs. Joan Kennedy – Sen. Ted Kennedy’s former wife – and Gov. Paul Cellucci of Massachusetts. They were very interested in the renewed interest in India, especially with regards to outsourcing. Joan spent half an hour with me after the talk talking about her experiences in India, where she spent time with Mother Teresa while Sen. Kennedy was busy touring the neighboring countries. You may not get to meet such illustrious people, but take the opportunity to give a talk when it’s presented.

Building Your Brand

In the process of this networking you “brand” your discipline and yourself as a professional and/or an expert in your industry. If you do this well enough – and attend enough conferences – and maintain a positive reputation, you can become one of the people that other people in your industry want to get to know. If you achieve that status, chances are your business will do just fine. You can really take off and do miracles, knowingly or unknowingly making deals that you never even dreamed of. I have a few examples that I wish I could cite here, but for confidentiality reasons, I am better off avoiding specifics. Suffice to say, this branding and networking provided me with ‘newly found wings’ at Pfizer, allowing me to make connections and bring in new partnerships to the table. It also gave me opportunities to connect with folks in other sectors, and provided me with the opportunity to be invited by President George W. Bush to the White House prior to his 2006 trip to India.

Intelligence

Let’s not discount the actual knowledge you can take away from a conference. Many deals are happening or are underway, especially on the M&A front. You get to learn of these, first-hand through the network. Sometimes, you can learn the inside scoop if you’re really interested in competitive intelligence.

There are always general small business- and marketing-related conferences and events going on throughout the year. The quality of information presented will obviously vary from conference to conference, but the good ones can give you great fuel for your marketing campaigns or other business strategies. If nothing else, they can get you excited to go and try some new things. As a Pfizer representative, I could get many passports to attend these key conferences. I got to be on the Economist Advisory Board and also on guest panels.

Nothing For Your Niche?

If there aren’t really any events going on in your niche, perhaps you could take the initiative and get one together. Why not? Find some other people in your niche and try to work something out, starting with social media and building toward in-person meet-ups. If nothing comes of it, at least you still did a little networking right?

One should always look for things that relate to your particular industry, though. Those are going to be the ones that you really benefit from as far as networking and branding. You should keep your antennae up for things that really are beneficial to your employer or your own business, so that you can act proactively and take measures to prevent any unforeseen activity. Also acting on a ‘tip’ in a timely fashion can potentially save your business a big bundle. One should also try to build other dimensions to your own niche. This allows you to not only learn new things, but also lets you peek into benchmarking areas that others have successfully accomplished.

At one of the conference that I was invited to, as a member of the Board of Directors at a non-profit organization, I got to interact with CNN founder Ted Turner and former U.N. Secretary Kofi Annan at dinner. During the dinner conversations, after consuming some cocktails and wine, I really got to listen to things that I would not get to know otherwise!

After regaling me with some of his life stories, Ted Turner joked during dinner conversation that he has a few things he would like to do in the near future. When he visited India last time, he told me, he could not travel to see Taj Mahal, as it was densely foggy and they did not get clearance to take fly his jet to Agra. So he’d like to return to India and see that great landmark.

Also, he would like to break Bob Hope’s record for ‘honorary doctorates’ (around 108 in total) from universities and institutions. He is nowhere near that number, but if he keeps networking, who knows?

Makarand (Mak) Jawadekar most recently served as Director, Portfolio Management and Performance at Pfizer Global R&D, until February 2010, when he opted for an early retirement after 28 years at Pfizer Inc. He currently serves on several companies’ advisory boards and also consults with bio/pharmaceutical companies for global outreach in emerging market regions. He can be reached at [email protected].