Open innovation: A paradigm shift in pharma R&D?

Open innovation (OI) holds promise to accelerate, diversify, and innovate research and development (R&D) in the pharmaceutical industry. It remains to be assessed in which way and to what extent OI is leveraged in practice by current pharmaceutical R&D organizations. Therefore, here we comprehen-sively analyzed 21 research-based pharmaceutical companies and benchmarked their implementation of OI. Our data showed that OI is an integral part of R&D of all assessed pharmaceutical companies; models typically used are research collaborations, innovation incubators, academic centers of excellence, public-private partnerships (PPPs), mergers and acquisitions (M&A), licensing, or corporate venture capital (VC) funds. In addition, we conclude that the implementation of OI differs greatly across corporations and, consequently, that R&D organizations of research-based pharmaceutical companies can be classified based on their level of OI implementation into three distinct types: predominantly traditional R & D; network-based R & D; and R&D ecosystems.

Automated summary

Open innovation plays a crucial role in accelerating, diversifying, and innovating research and development in the pharmaceutical industry. Research suggests that there are different ways in which pharmaceutical companies implement OI, leading to three distinct types: traditional R&D, network-based R&D, and R&D ecosystems.