Competitive Intelligence

Philadelphia: Presenting at the Center for Business Intelligence’s 2nd Annual "Competitive Intelligence for Biotechnology & Pharmaceutical Companies" Conference

I was in Philadelphia today, presenting a 45-minute session called "Salesforce CI: Creating Dynamic Two-Way Intelligence Relationships with Sales" at the Center for Business Intelligence 2nd Annual CI for Bio/Pharmaceutical Companies conference. It was a fun event – and about 30% better-attended than last year’s while also housed in a much better venue at the Marriott downtown.

One interesting take-away was a follow-up discussion we had about FDA regulations about salesforce drug comparisons that I think is probably unique to pharma-salesforce-CI: that is, unless there’s been a head-to-head clinical trial to scientifically back up sales comparisons between competitive products (used in sell-against strategy apps and the like) it’s illegal to make comparisons between drugs at all – at least in the United States. We’ll see how that’s reflected in my research for the London version of this event in June, where I’ll give a similar presentation for a European Bio-Pharma audience.

Otherwise, content of the program was very good and the group itself was a lot more eclectic than in the past as well – representing more people from financial community and the generics side of the market – CBI’s really evolved this conference since the last one in January 2003.

My slides are temporarily available for download by clicking here.

- Arik