Interview with Luis Truchado, by José A. Plaza.
Originally published in Diario Médico.
**
The big pharma and small biotech sectors have been progressively moving closer together for decades, especially because the former have been looking for the latter. In this evolution, the professional profiles working in biopharmaceutical companies have also been evolving and adapting to changes in the market and, in the case of Spain, to the characteristics of a young and still immature biotech sector, but which is already growing up.
Entrepreneurs, after emerging at the end of the last century, have made the 21st century their own. Their profile is different from that of the traditional managerial executive, accustomed to the peace of mind of following a fairly predictable path and objectives. In biotechnology, risk is a risky business, even more so if it is an SME, a business model that represents the vast majority of the Spanish fabric.
Big pharma looks to bio
Luis Truchado, an executive search consultant, has spent almost 30 years analysing the biopharmaceutical market and searching for management profiles for companies. He believes that the big pharma model that prevailed two or three decades ago ‘is no longer replicable’, and that large laboratories are adapting to a situation in which ‘being big pharma was the good and appropriate thing to do’. In contrast to the small size of biotechs, and some cases of biotechs that have become large (Amgen, Biogen, Celgene…), big pharma ‘has been moving closer to biotechnology and has been slimming down to achieve a weight that is bearable in the new times’.
Are there professionals and talent in Spain to lead the biotechnology business, and are international profiles still preferable? Truchado, who worked in the pharmaceutical industry (GSK and Novartis) and has been at the head of the Eurogalenus consultancy since 1992, believes that both groups are compatible and, in fact, coexist: ‘Many people have come from abroad, and very good ones, because Spain is a very attractive place to work, to live, and because it is part of the European big five. We are a good business country’.
Spain attracts
In the last 10-15 years, the opposite movement has gained strength: Spanish scientists, entrepreneurs, directors and managers going abroad to the point of making Spain ‘a very good exporting country in the biomedical field’. Truchado speaks of a ‘cross-pollination of Spaniards and foreigners’.
And within Spain? The biotech business sector grew at the beginning of the century, held its own during the crisis and in the last five years has begun to reap a good harvest. Truchado recalls that Spain, and therefore its professional profiles, ‘has arrived late to the biotech market’. Success stories are emerging, but more are still needed to consolidate a driving force: ‘Until recently we only wanted bricks and mortar, and that’s how we were known. Sometimes it seems that we only see what goes wrong, or what doesn’t succeed, but there are many biotech companies, and many professionals in the sector, who are doing very well’.
Seeking risk
According to Truchado, one of the ideal biotech manager or executive profiles is the one who has lived for some years in the world of big pharma, and ‘there comes a point when he decides that this environment is not enough for him, and that he wants to abandon the predictable to feel more risk’.
The key, he adds, is to identify this type of profile and create teams in which, in order to manage the risk involved in the biotech sector, ‘the hunter and the farmer’ coexist, i.e. a more active and proactive profile and a more patient and reactive one: ‘There are few cases in which the same person can represent both profiles, so the best thing is to put together teams in which both are present’.
*