Tough Balancing Act: Doing vs. Coordinating vs. Reporting the Work

This meeting will be held at the MBC Offices, located on the ninth floor of One Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA 02142.

Topic Overview

Finding the appropriate balance between performing activities within functional teams, coordinating these activities across functional teams and reporting program updates to various stakeholders is a key management challenge. The challenges in reaching the right balance differ greatly by the scale of the organization (start-ups to Big Pharma) and the scope along several dimensions (e.g., functional, geographic, intercompany).

What are some warning signs that things are out of balance?

What can you do about it?

How do you prevent future imbalances?

Presenter

Timothy Cooke, Ph.D.

Dr. Cooke has held leadership positions in both large pharmaceutical and emerging biotechnology companies in the field of vaccines and immunotherapeutics. He is currently working on a new start-up company funded by Polaris Ventures. He was previously Chief Operating Officer of AVANT Immunotherapeutics until its acquisition by Celldex Therapeutics in March 2008. From 2000-2004 he was CEO of Mojave Therapeutics, a therapeutic vaccines company that was acquired by Antigenics. He joined the Merck Vaccine Division when it was formed in 1991 and played a key role in building their global commercial organization. He was also a founding member of Sanofi Pasteur-MSD, a European joint venture for vaccines between Merck and Sanofi Pasteur. The combined sales of these two organizations were $5 billion in 2007.

Dr. Cooke has an MBA and Ph.D. from Columbia University and a B.S. in Chemistry from St. Joseph's University.