When I was asked to write a blog this week on the topic of how open innovation (OI) is driving new thinking in healthcare companies – my first thought was: When hasn’t OI driven new thinking in healthcare companies? During my career in academic biomedical research, many of my medical school colleagues were funded by such companies to conduct very focused research, and to participate in clinical trials of specific therapies. Pharmaceutical companies and other healthcare companies have a long history of working with the academic world to develop new drugs, understand mechanisms and assess effectiveness.

But one of the challenges I’ve faced at NineSigma is addressing the culture at some healthcare companies whose people may assume they are using OI effectively because of this type of previous experience. When I ask, where have you looked already to find a solution that can meet your needs? Most often the answer is, the experts that are already known and that the company has worked with before, and people identified based on searching for publications based on keywords specifically associated with the topic. But consider this: with such an approach, the same questions are asked of the same people over and over again.

Open innovation is more than that. Open innovation is reaching beyond what is already known, and thinking about problems and possible solutions in new ways. It may be as simple as reaching beyond an existing list of go-to people and organizations to expand across the globe, or as complex as developing an entirely new platform and business model for healthcare access.

These days, healthcare companies are doing more than just keeping the new drug pipeline flowing. With pressure from regulatory agencies to protect the environment (and us!) from accumulation of drugs and hormones in our water, safer drug disposal and “greener” formulation components are needed. With global economies changing, products to facilitate entry into new and emerging markets are of great interest. With energy costs rising, more efficient manufacturing is another big issue. Convenient new drug delivery platforms, novel medical devices, protection against sole source suppliers, overcoming long-standing technical hurdles, and adapting manufacturing for new drug formulations and delivery mechanisms are important current needs.

Many years ago, when my lab was located at Children’s Hospital in Seattle, Washington, the lead nephrologist held television interviews below my office window in response to some of the early pediatric cases of hemolytic uremic syndrome caused by E. coli O157:H7. So one of my hopes for the future of OI in healthcare is that work will be done that helps me feel secure that my family is protected against new diseases and global pandemics. What are yours?

Just this past week, I had the opportunity to update my retirement account contribution through my employer’s plan. Included in the glossy brochure that explained all the new features and investment products available to me was a quiz. You probably know the one- it has a series of questions that assess your tolerance for riskiness in your retirement investment portfolio. I bring this up because in the 3 years that I’ve been a Program Manager at NineSigma, I’ve seen many clients and potential clients with a broad range of risk tolerances when it comes to Open Innovation (OI). Yes, many of our clients are Fortune 500 companies, and Wikipedia defines middle market companies as “those with revenues generally between USD$100 million and USD$1 billion per year.” Some of you might assume that a big company with annual revenue of $1 billion plus might have higher tolerance than a smaller company for spending money on OI, for opening up to new suppliers and development partners, or simply for participating in a process that can sometimes bring in completely unexpected results.  Do the Fortune 500 have more resources to wade through and vet potential solutions, and to engage with and fund new solution providers? Maybe, but my experience has been that it’s really a matter of comfort with the unknown that drives “success” in the application of OI in any organization- no matter what the annual revenue is.

Big companies and small can face challenges and road blocks as they try to improve processes, reduce costs, enter new markets, and drive products to market faster than their competitors.  Addressing these issues might mean that a company asks an OI intermediary like NineSigma to conduct a search for a partner with a very specific set of design/development/manufacturing capabilities, for an experts group to act as an advisory panel for a new market, for technical and business intelligence in a clearly defined technology arena, for co-development partners for a new product, for a novel technology that will improve an internal process, or for a toll manufacturer or material supplier. Bottom line is that we see needs of all types across companies of various sizes. Open Innovation intermediaries can give you access to people, technologies, and geographies that you might not be able to reach on your own, even if you do have the internal resources for an extensive scouting group. The Fortune 500 may run multiple NineSigma projects and a smaller company might run one or two a year, but the process we use, and the support we provide, is the same and applies equally well. Depending on your openness to new ways of looking at and solving challenges, OI could be a nice addition to your middle market company’s  “investment” portfolio. Let NineSigma help you launch an open innovation program. Contact us to learn more about open innovation.

In just the past 25 years or so, new technologies like that for automated DNA sequencing have enabled us to begin to understand the language that encodes our biological lives. This is the language of the genome- in which our genes are sentences made up of DNA letters and words that are used as molecular instructions to each of our cells. What proteins should be made to build a heart muscle? What enzymes should be produced to control our blood sugar? What building blocks are needed to make new connections in our brains so that we remember what we’ve learned? Our current knowledge and understanding of the human genome is made possible by technological advances that scientists use to detect, measure, analyze, and compile new information obtained through experimentation in the field of molecular biology. We know what many of our genes are for; we also know some of what happens if a gene has a mistake in it, or is damaged. Such mutations can lead to innocuous individual variations, to inherited conditions, or to diseases like cancer, among others. It is this knowledge about specific genes that has allowed genetic tests to be developed that can predict the likelihood that you may develop certain diseases, like breast cancer.

On a broader level, complete genomes have been recorded from several individuals so that we know exactly what DNA sequences describe these people. The cost of compiling this information has ranged from $2.7 billion for the first one in 2003 to $1,500 today, according to Wired magazine’s online article, and is predicted to go even lower. As far as I can tell, even these numbers don’t take into account the time and cost of all the technological innovations required to enable researchers to do the work! But the idea that every one of us could soon have our own genome “read” so that we can learn more about our sensitivity to certain drugs, or about how effective our medications are likely to be, is the subject of new fields called pharmacogenetics and pharmacogenomics- perhaps better known as personalized medicine. These new fields address how your genes control the way you respond to certain drugs, and why different people (with genetic variations) will respond to a certain drug in different ways.

New technologies are going to be required to allow us to personalize our healthcare to adapt to our individual genetic variations. Inexpensive genome sequencers are in the works, and at NineSigma, I’ve seen an incredible variety of new medical devices and diagnostic technologies presented in response to challenges we’ve posted on behalf of global clients.  What is especially exciting for me, and something that NineSigma prides itself on, is that we often find a technology from one area that may be relevant to a completely different industry. Advances in personalized medicine, while valuable and even essential for human health and well-being, might be applicable in other sectors. A tiny genetic lab-on-a-chip might be useful for an individual’s medical diagnosis, but may also be useful to detect microbial contamination in an industrial setting.  As personalized medicine moves forward, this is an exciting time to be part of the innovation world!

For more information about how open innovation can assist with new product development, contact us today.