In This Issue Are You an Experienced Licensing Professional? Become a CLP President's Message: Foundation Focus
Vancouver Local Chapter Plays Key Role In Meeting 2007 Deals of Distinction Awarded At Annual Meeting:
Traveler’s Guide: The Local Chapters LES 2008 Spring Meeting & LESI Conference: |
President's Message
Today, I come to you as the new president of the Licensing Executives Society and the first LES president from a pharmaceutical company. I believe this Society and its members have accomplished a tremendous amount and I hope to take us all to the next level by focusing my year on three things–the globalization of our Society, the excellence of our Society and a new certification program that will give our business partners the confidence that they are dealing with a Certified Licensing Professional when conducting a transaction. Also, as the difference between licensing and acquisition deals narrows, I will endeavor to broaden the LES charter to include Excellence in Acquisition transactions. Today, I will talk for a few minutes about what LES has meant to me and what it can be for you if you become dynamic members that actively contribute to its success. Rather than speak about contracts and patents, I want to focus on people helping each other. I will speak to you from all the facets of my life. In many ways, today represents the culmination of my 27 years in the industry. Today I come to you as a son, father and husband. My wife Claire has been with me for the best 29 years of OUR life. She was trained as a social worker, as was my father. After our children were born, she focused her energy on their care and upbringing along with contributions that she made to our church, our social lives and the geriatric social work field. But most of all, I want to thank her for being the spiritual leader of our family. We would not have all achieved what we have without her love and faith in each of us. Today I also come to you as a scientist with a Ph.D. in biochemistry; however, I left the scientific field in 1990 to try the business development and licensing field. My first move in this field was to attend a 1990 LES meeting in New Orleans. I met a lot of lawyers there and I learned they weren't so bad. As time went forward, I became very good friends and very dependent on three lawyers—Helaine Nelson at Abbott who was my right-hand person for all my transactions, Rob Werner who filled that role at Pharmacia, and currently, KC Lam at Schering-Plough. There is no way I could achieve the success I have achieved in dealmaking without their constant support, insight and most importantly, friendship. Today I come to you as a colleague. I have worked closely with business people like Nancy Lurker, Deb Jorn, Sean McNicholas, Ellen Geisel and Rob Kowalski who have helped me realize the value of getting rights to products from other companies. I have also learned that many of the things licensors want to say about their product cannot be approved by the regulatory agencies. I would like to thank my colleagues, including Roz Feder, Ratnakar Mitra, Paul Medeiros, Ann Martin, Linda Johnson and Gilda Clayton. We have a terrific, interdependent team that I am proud to work with. With two other colleagues, Arlene Morris and Jack Anthony, I have worked on many panels and designed a business development training program. These people, whom I met through LES, are amongst my closest friends. They have achieved tremendous personal success and guided me along the way. Today I come to you as a boss. I like to think that I have helped to advance the careers of many of my direct reports in the field of business development and licensing. I feel very fortunate to have Kelley Dealhoy here, one of our strong contributors at Schering-Plough who presented a workshop yesterday during the meeting. Kristina Rodnikova was on my team at Abbott. When she joined me, her native language, Russian, was also her most preferred language. Since we were working in the Midwest, my boss questioned my choice of her as an employee. He said she was hard to understand. I said listen more closely. I am proud to say that today she runs Abbott's diagnostic business in Canada. Today I come to you as an employee. I am fortunate to have my current boss, Mike DuBois, who has supported me in many ways and taught me a great deal over the last eight years that we have worked together. I will never forget being misquoted by an editor of a healthcare publication called The Pink Sheet. Pharmacia did not look good because of a statement I made that was misconstrued by the editor. Before I got home from the meeting, Mike had already explained the situation to Fred Hassan and Carrie Cox, our CEO and President, and made it a non-issue. He truly has stuck by me through much bigger issues as well. Today I come to you as the past healthcare committee chair. My fondest memory of this responsibility involves the sponsoring of a meeting in Boston in 1994, when the healthcare committee was just beginning to become a major factor in the LES. The hierarchy at LES required the healthcare committee to contract the hotel and be responsible for the billing, expensing and overall success of the meeting. I remember thinking that unless we had at least 50 registrants, we would not cover our costs and we would bear the liability personally. At one point, during a telephone conference with Maribeth Cicero and Louis Scotti, Maribeth brought to my attention that we needed to sign the housing contract to guarantee a minimum number of rooms at the Sheraton Boston. Louis Scotti asked if I was authorized to sign the contract. I thought about it a minute and I told him "I am authorized to sign CDA's (confidential disclosure agreements), so that must mean I could sign hotel contracts on behalf of Abbott." To this day, the Abbott auditors have not caught that! The meeting was a tremendous success, as we had over 200 registrants. Today I come to you as the first President of the LES from a pharmaceutical company. I am proud to say that one of the greatest strengths of our organization is its ability to encourage and leverage the interactions of multiple disciplines. I continue to be amazed at the learning that takes place across industries, whether it's attending the Electronics Sector Committee Meetings or a Chemical Committee Meeting or a Healthcare Meeting. There is always insight to be gained and lessons to be learned that transfer across industries. We all must work together across our various industries to strengthen Intellectual Property laws that protect inventors and are the growth engines of innovation worldwide. There can be no risk unless there are built-in rewards in the system. Strong patent protection is the reward. Without risk and rewards, we will not develop new, breakthrough products. Today I come to you as someone who has been mentored by some of the best people in the field. I would like to highlight just a few. Frank Barnes, who was the head of licensing at Abbott Laboratories over 15 years, was my first mentor in this field. When I transferred from the science lab to the business development field in 1990, I had very little training in finance or valuation work. Frank was a businessman and superior listener and educator. Frank came to my office and spent a week with me, teaching me the ins and outs of the field, reviewing letters I was writing, disclosure agreements I was signing, meetings I was conducting, and telephone conference calls with companies in Japan and Europe. It was a baptism by fire. I remember vividly a negotiation that was taking place in Europe. It was decided that I was trained enough to handle Abbott's position in this negotiation and I flew over to Copenhagen for the negotiations with Novo. After the second day, I called home to Frank Barnes to go over a few questions I had with him. He answered the first few questions. It was about 7:00 at night European time and about noon Chicago time. I had a few other questions when Frank cut me off and said, "You know Tom, I think some of these questions are more complex than I first thought and you should have an advisor at the meetings the following day." A nice way to say—you need help! You are so far over your head! I said, "But Frank, our meeting starts at eight in the morning, that's 13 hours from now." Frank responded, "The flight is only six hours, I'll meet you for breakfast at 6:30, be ready." Frank flew over, gave me the confidence I needed to finish the negotiations and asked critical questions through me, so that my authority in the group had not been challenged. I will never forget that example of mentorship as long as I live. Frank died of brain cancer seven years ago. It is in his memory that we choose an LES member each year that has demonstrated this type of mentoring for the Frank Barnes Memorial Mentor Award. Today, I come to ask for your help. I have three objectives for this next year:
My goal is to help everyone in this room achieve their dream. My father was a big believer that if you help enough other people to get what they want in life, you'll get what you want in life. Have you ever been helped in any way by someone in LES? Did you get a phone number, some advice on a deal, some help on a personal problem? How many people have grown or learned something critical through interactions with someone else in LES? I want to encourage each and every one of you to reach out to another. Let us all be part of the mentoring relationship. It will be unclear who will have gained more, the person who requests the information or the one who provides it. Also, be sure to push yourself to establish new relationships. Meet new people. Get new ideas. Build new friends. Enlarge your circle and that of others!
As I said in the opening remarks, the focus of next year's Licensing Executives Society will be to globalize, educate and mentor, and to develop a certification process. Most of all we want to excel in everything that we do. To help achieve this, I would like to thank the past presidents who have brought us to the place that we are today and are helping us create our Certification Program. Particularly, I would like to thank Ron Grudziecki, Jim Malackowski, Jim Sobieraj, Kathleen Denis, Patrick O'Reilley, Dwight Olson, and Allen Baum. I would also like to thank Ken Schoppmann. Ken runs our ten-person office out of Washington, D.C. Ken is the most professional business manager and trusted right-hand man I have ever known. It is hard to recognize all the things that Ken does for us. However, we would surely be aware of their existence if they were not done—they are priceless and critical. Ken makes things happen and we all owe him a great deal. We will continue to succeed as we build on the past, develop the present and plan for the future. We will enhance our reputation for value—we have good stuff! Now, some facts on globalization. You may now know that there are approximately 12,000 members of LES, representing more than 85 countries and aligned with 31 chapters. There are about 6,000 members in LES (USA & Canada), the primary participants in this group. There are another 6,000 members of LESI (LES International), who are also members of our society. These LESI members exist in 44 countries. The biggest groups are in Japan, the U.K. and Germany. One of our goals for the next year is to enhance the interaction of these 12,000 people, to build a network that is more global that will meet your business needs, and to learn from each other the things that work and the things that are important to licensing professionals in different countries. One big step that we are taking in this effort is to collapse the two regional meetings that we would normally have in 2008 into one very large international meeting to be held in Chicago on May 4-7. We are expecting a very large turnout of our international brethren to join us in Chicago for a meeting that promises to deliver tremendous value in terms of the content and networking opportunities across the globe. Next, our Excellence and Education. In 2007, we ran twelve educational programs. Some examples of these programs include the Professional Development Series, both the Fundamental Course and the Intermediate Course, collaborations with BIO including Business Development Basics and Advanced Business Development, and an Advanced Negotiation Skills and Technology course in conjunction with BIO. We also have Valuation Skills courses, Advanced Valuation Skills and Technology Transfer Seminars. The Advanced Strategy Course is something new that we are offering this year. We believe that combining our educational offerings, our experienced members of this group, and our ability to mentor new professionals in the field, will make our certification process of great value. We believe it will be very successful and indispensable to those who hire people within this field. Employers will benefit from this certification and employees will enjoy the important recognition and validation of their work experience.
I am serious about connecting with all the members of LES. I have an e-mail, which any of you can contact me at. The e-mail address is president@les.org. In addition to our international meeting in Chicago in May, we will have the Annual LES (USA & Canada) Meeting in Orlando in October. Also, please remember the many local chapters that have been very successful at running monthly meetings that are in your own neighborhood. If you need any help identifying the local LES Chapter in your area, or you want to start one, please contact me or any of our staff. Thank you for the honor to serve as the 43rd LES President. Together, through our relationships, our excellent win-win licensing and acquisition projects, we will advance science, find cures for mental and physical diseases, improve the environment, and leave this world a better place than we came into. I had a friend at Pharmacia and later Schering-Plough whose name is Bruce Reid. He was famous for the saying "I just want to make a difference today." His life was cut short by cancer but his memory lives on in all of us, and he truly made a difference. Let's go out there and make successful alliances–the cornerstone to better health, advancing science and a global network of strong allies. Love Thy Neighbor! |
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| Copyright© 2007 Licensing
Executives Society (U.S.A. and Canada), Inc. |
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Global Excellence In Licensing And
Acquisition Through Certification
Finally, our major goal for
the next year is to launch a
certification process. We are
going to name it a Certified
Licensing Professional, the
CLP. The idea here is to certify
people who have taken
certain coursework and
also have experience doing
deals; so, when an officer is looking to hire a licensing professional,
they can be sure if someone lists that they are a certified licensing
professional, a CLP, that they are getting someone that has certain
credentials, relevant training, and most importantly, on-the-ground
deal negotiation experience. The certification process will be launched
this year and we promise that we will grandfather you into the CLP if
you think you qualify now. A good bottle of Italian wine goes a long
way with this LES President. This program very nicely complements
the excellent educational offerings that the society has developed over
the last ten years.