Biopharma's Inflection Point According to Giovanni Caforio

A sector that is going through one of its most exciting periods. This is how Giovanni Caforio, Chairman and CEO of Bristol-Myers Squibb, described the biopharma sector when meeting students in a new appointment of the cycle "A conversation with..." organized by the Bocconi Graduate School. During the meeting Caforio also offered advice on how best to develop a career and the values that a top manager must convey.

Caforio began by talking about his professional career, starting with a degree in medicine and then moving on to pharmaceutical R&D and then marketing and management in the biopharma sector. "It is essential at the beginning of your career to broaden as much as possible your foundations in terms of skills and experiences," he advised students.

Then taking stock of the biopharma industry, Caforio underlined that "it is going through its most exciting period". A sector that is at an inflection point, he explained, divided between opportunities (the understanding of diseases that grows exponentially, the rise of R&D ecosystems) and challenges (drug development is still long and expensive, healthcare systems under stress).

His speech concluded by talking about the management of resources - "the most important value of a company are its people and leadership must know how to transmit to them the most important values: including passion, the desire to innovate and the accountability of actions and decisions."

The meeting closed with a Q&A session with students who asked Caforio questions about issues such as the use of Big Data in the biopharma industry and partnerships between companies and universities.

This was the first meeting in the new cycle of the Graduate School's "A conversation with..." initiative. "These meetings represent a unique opportunity for students to meet leaders of the business community," explains Antonella Carù, Dean of the Graduate School, "in a closed context, with a limited number of participants, and they can establish a direct and free interaction with the guest speaker, asking questions on very different topics, from market challenges, to management and strategy issues, to their careers and personal life choices."