With our free networking sessions, you can air common challenges of working in our sector and learn from others’ experiences. You are welcome to attend!
What we offer
- Highly interactive sessions, in a safe environment to share issues, challenges and learning
- Peer to peer advice
- Tools and tips from expert facilitator(s)
Who should attend?
- Anyone who plans, resources, governs or delivers a portfolio of R&D projects, and has been on either side of the conversation when there were not enough people to go round. Project and programme managers, portfolio and resource managers, functional leaders who supply people into projects, and R&D leaders who own the plan. All levels of experience are welcome. The hour is built around discussing what you have seen in your day-to-day work.
Benefits
- Share their own challenges with like-minded people
- Pick up some successful approaches from others
- Hear some tips from our expert moderator
- Elect to attend further sessions
Logistics and Costs
- 1-hour virtual session
- Free of charge (booking required)
- 8 – 16 participants
When capacity runs out: what are the options?
Wednesday 21 October 2026, 4pm BST (UK time) – online meeting
Every portfolio is resourced against a plan, which is out of date within a quarter. Projects accelerate, new ones arrive, priorities move, and sooner or later the demand on one particular group of people exceeds what that group can supply.
Most of us have watched an organisation reach that point. But what do the most capable organisations do differently? This session is about what happens next: what your organisation did the last time capacity ran out, whether it was the right call, and what it turned out to cost. Come with a specific example and expect a lively debate.
Areas we will cover during this session:
- When the plan meets a moving porƞolio, which resources actually run out, and why is it so often the same ones?
- What does an organisation really do when demand exceeds capacity in flight, and what did yours do last time?
- When teams take the strain themselves, is that pragmatism or a failure of leadership?
Moderator
Alpesh Mistry
Alpesh has spent sixteen years in pharmaceutical R&D at AstraZeneca, GSK and Novo Nordisk, working on how organisations govern, prioritise and resource their portfolios.
He has held portfolio roles from analyst through to director, across the full span of development from target discovery to launch. At AstraZeneca he supported C-suite investment decisions on latestage assets and ran the annual reassessment of probability of success across three therapy areas, shortlisting around 100 assets a cycle. At GSK he sat on a VP-level council convened to improve early research productivity. At Novo Nordisk he was Portfolio Director for R&D Portfolio Strategy and Governance, representing portfolio management on the senior research governance committee and designing the resource prioritisation framework used across research and early development.
He now runs Portex Advisory, an independent consultancy helping pharma and biotech R&D organisations execute their portfolios better by building the governance and portfolio management infrastructure underneath. He is a pharmacist by training, with a PhD from the University of Nottingham, an Executive MBA from IE Business School in Madrid, and an MoP certificate in portfolio management.
He has held portfolio roles from analyst through to director, across the full span of development from target discovery to launch. At AstraZeneca he supported C-suite investment decisions on latestage assets and ran the annual reassessment of probability of success across three therapy areas, shortlisting around 100 assets a cycle. At GSK he sat on a VP-level council convened to improve early research productivity. At Novo Nordisk he was Portfolio Director for R&D Portfolio Strategy and Governance, representing portfolio management on the senior research governance committee and designing the resource prioritisation framework used across research and early development.
He now runs Portex Advisory, an independent consultancy helping pharma and biotech R&D organisations execute their portfolios better by building the governance and portfolio management infrastructure underneath. He is a pharmacist by training, with a PhD from the University of Nottingham, an Executive MBA from IE Business School in Madrid, and an MoP certificate in portfolio management.