Today we revealed the results of our buy-side BD survey about licensing best practices at the FierceBiotech Webinar titled “Partnering with Pharma: How to Get a Deal”. On the panel with us were Ad Rawcliffe from GSK and Anna Protopapas from Millennium/Takeda. One major takeaway from Ad and Anna’s presentation was the need for a strong relationship between the licensors and pharma/biotech partners. Clearly this is more important for a partnership than it is for an outlicense or an M&A. We could not agree more with this sentiment. The problem is that it’s very hard and time consuming to establish a relationship with every partner who expresses an interest. Something that most biotech companies don’t fully appreciate is the need for the entire senior managemet team to get engaged with partnering discussions, not just the CBO/BD team. While BD at a small company does more than simply facilitate, they need to make sure that they get their team fully engaged to make a deal work. Ultimately you need a clinician or scientist speaking with the partner’s clinical champion to get them excited, not a business bozo. For more musing or to get a copy of a six slide overview of the presentation that Jay and I shared, please send me an email at geoff@locustwalkpartners.com.