Thursday, November 8, 2012
Cell Therapy Industry Group Welcomes its 4,000th member
I'm pleased to point out that today the LinkedIn Cell Therapy Industry Group welcomed its 4,000th member today.
The Cell Therapy Industry group was created to serve as a network of those in the cell therapy industry. The group acts as a vehicle for referrals, networking, information, and facilitating collaboration. The group's focus is on the activities of companies in and serving the space.
The group began in July 2008. It took 2.5 years to reach the first 1000 members, 9 mos to reach 2,0000, 6 months to reach 3,000, and 6 months to meet today's 4,000 member mark.
As is typical, there is a very high percentage of passive participants but the group benefits from an avid group of participants who post, share, exchange, and debate on a range of topics ranging from regulatory, clinical, commercial, scientific, manufacturing, financial, and other topics of interest to the group.
As the group has grown I've noted two trends pertaining to the composition of the membership: (a) having tapped out the c-level suite, growth is increasingly coming from down the hierarchy of the corporate food chain and including those in the operational trenches, and (b) a much higher ratio of new members of late is from outside the US, presumably as LinkedIn increasingly penetrates OUS markets.
We strive hard to maintain the quality of the participation by screening each applicant, deleting off-topic posts, moving promotional posts to the "promotions" tab" and encouraging a balance of news-sharing with useful discussion threads.
I'm proud to say the group has become a vibrant and valuable part of the sector due to the hard work and contributions of all involved.
As these kind of virtual networks become exponentially larger and provide different value than the professional societies representing the sector, I will be fascinated to watch if and how this affects how sectors like our interact and how this will impact the traditional value proposition of member-based professional societies.
If you are not a member of the LinkedIn Cell Therapy Industry Group, check it out.
--Lee
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The other trend worth noting is that while LinkedIn used to be seen almost exclusively as the place for corporate types, academics are becoming increasingly involved. No doubt part of this is driven by the idea of using LinkedIn to feed the ever-alluring academic fantasy of swapping the ivory tower for its glassier equivalent but I also suspect LinkedIn's incorporation of Groups has led to happily embedded academics finding a utility for the site through the topical exchange of information with peers of all stripes with a common interest.
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