As we’ve done in the past, we’ve tabulated the countries of origin from the stack of business card collected at BIO Europe 2012. Our “rules” for this analysis are simple. If the person we meet is based in Country A, but reports to headquarters in Country B, then we count that person as coming from country B unless s/he has specific geographic responsibility.
First, here is a global view. For the more mathematically inclined:
Asia – 19%
Europe – 40%
MENA – 7%
North America – 33%
No surprise here, given that this was a European conference taking place in Germany. Targeting South American companies was not part of our overall objective at the conference, so the fact that we did not meet folks from this region did not disturb us. We were very pleased to meet a few companies from the MENA region.
Looking more closely at Europe:
We were very pleased to meet folks from Switzerland, The Netherlands, Poland, and Ireland. The United Kingdom were well-represented in our very unscientific survey. However, this may be a reflection of the projects that we’re working on, which tend to have a UK focus.
As a consultancy, we use data like this (plus other metrics) to determine if it’s worth our time and resources to attend a conference. As a general rule, we like conferences where 50-75% of our meetings are with companies outside North America. But we also balance this with the specific needs of our clients at that particular point in time.
What these data do not reflect are the companies who declined the opportunity to meet with us. Perhaps we’ll look at that in a future post. The data also do not include impromptu meetings we had with folks with whom we have a good, long-standing relationship, and hence did not exchange a business card. Our informal meeting with the guys at the Almirall booth come to mind.
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