[Business Models] The End of Biotech?

I recently individually interviewed 10 biotech CEOs and 10 biotech venture capitalists as part of the data collection portion of an executive coaching engagement. It wasn’t the subject of the interview – which was to collect feedback data regarding my coaching client – but everyone to a person brought up the subject of venture capital and biotech.

Everyone talked about the model of investment and development that’s been in existence since Genentech (1976) and Amgen (1980) were founded.… Read the rest

[Dept. of Bad Advice] Your Brand is Not – Repeat Not – Your Elevator Pitch

I could blame my grumpy reaction to this last set of rainy days in San Francisco, but I won’t. Instead I’ll attribute to the type of “nice graphics first, let’s think about what it means later” approach that pops up every once and a while. And a case of bad career advice.

PriceWaterhouseCoopers is running something called Personal Brand Week. Their web page has a cute set of five name tags, conveniently corresponding to the five days of a traditional workweek and arranged in ascending order, foundations first.Read the rest

(More) Time to be Greedy: Why You Need A Brand Called “You”

This is the second in a series of three posts dealing with “brand.” A piece on employment brands in general proceeded it and some company employment brand examples and how-to’s will follow. As someone who’s been in the people (and teams) coaching business for over 25 years, and also been directly responsible for hiring thousands of people through roles running large staffing / recruiting operations, I have a pretty good idea why some firms recruit well (and others don’t), and how people can take their best foot forward as either a job candidate or consultant / vendor.Read the rest