I came away with a strong sense of progress. A belief that the issues that hinder collaborative innovation are being overcome by these pioneers. Delegates from major biopharma companies (including Merck, Pfizer, Bayer and Novartis) shared experiences and mixed with innovators from Innovative Medicines Initiative, Scynexis, Accelrys, Results for Development Institute and Collaborative Drug Discovery to name but a few.
Three of the key points I came away with were:
1. Multiple Orchestrators in a Networked Model
When I talk about Networked R&D I make a point to highlight that there can be multiple orchestrators in a networked model. Networked is a step beyond collaborative R&D where it is typical to have only one orchestrator. The number of examples of this are few and far between. It was therefore very exciting to hear how NASA has been achieving this. Jeffrey Davis, Ph.D., Director, Space Life Sciences at Johnson Space Center shared with the delegates that they have provided the infostructure in their network of innovators that enable research to occur even where NASA is not directly orchestrating. Kudos to NASA!
2. Nobody mandated that scientists should put annotations on Gene Wiki
Benjamin Good Ph.D. from NIBR presented on the progress made by Gene Wiki. What was incredible was not just the number of contributing authors and the progress they have made but also that the contributors didn't need a top down management communication to begin collaborating. This growing "movement" of contributors just make it happen. As we look at how change in engineered in major companies it is interesting to see how effective viral change (what we at IBM call "building a movement") can be when compared with "engineered change". Engineered change being the traditional approach to corporate transformation programs.
3. Small makes collaboration a necessity
At the conclusion of my presentation I was asked a lot of good questions. The one that has spurred the most thinking for me was the hypothesis that "big" pharma had lost their skills in collaboration. They had lost them as they have (in the past) got everything (people, resources, platforms etc) that they have requested. The need for true peer to peer collaboration was limited. By contrast small biopharma has had to collaborate to achieve their goals. This small biopharma trend is growing rapidly in GSK with their DPUs and within Pfizer with their RUs. A GSK delegate shared some real examples of how this is working. If we believe collaboration is necessary then limiting resources for big biopharma could force them to collaborate. It is one way of moving from a culture of "not invented here" to a culture of "not invented here!".
The presentation and paper I presented can be found at below.
The link to download the paper is: Paper
The Presentation can be accessed through slideshare and viewed also below.
