Powered by Open Innovation: Opportunities and Challenges in the Pharma Sector

摘要

The value of innovation in medicines is clear. Despite all of the progress in the twenty-first century, there are still many unmet medical needs and opportunities to improve healthcare. The challenges for pharmaceutical companies include ways in which to stay competitive and flexible in an environment of constant knowledge growth and increasingly sophisticated technologies, and ways to generate sufficient revenues to sustain their own growth. To that end, pharmaceutical companies are compelled to adapt different business models in the face of new challenges. The industry is plagued with long research and development (R&D) cycles and low success rates for innovative treatments; something has to change. The need to collaborate externally across the process of discovery, development, manufacturing and commercialization is a must. Furthermore, collaborations have increased in frequency and scope, expanding the opportunities to access global scientific talent in academia, research institutes and biotechnology companies. Despite the perception that pharma companies are 'closed' or tightly controlled industries, open innovation is already well established in the pharmaceutical sector and used to supplement R&D in the process of bringing new medicines for patients faster, and at a lower cost. Over the years, each pharma company has tailored the open-innovation concept to develop its own model based on particular needs and offerings.