In other words, if you do not need the money, do whatever you like openly. If you need the money, e.g. for clinical trials, then please make sure staying within the same legal framework, which is most probably not open!
And here is where I diverge. The very essence of the Creative Commons movement, the setting up of open source licenses, etc was to provide an open, legal framework for sharing content or software. Such a framework doesn’t exist in the drug discovery world, so yes, today open innovation is difficult. But that doesn’t mean it is not a goal we should not seek to attain. We need the Larry Lessig types who will push the open innovation agenda and push for and develop the appropriate frameworks that make it possible.
Why do I think so? Not because I believe open everything is better, but because the current model is broken. The level of innovation required to take the pharma industry forward is not going to be possible within the walls of an organization, especially in a world where the skills and knowledge required to develop drugs are evolving rapidly. Using some of the analogies in the original post actually illustrate that point. Chip design is terribly closed because chip innovations can be achieved in a controlled environment. Data center optimization is a proprietary thing cause it’s an unique optimization problem in many ways, although people do share pre-competitive information. Science is none of the above and needs an open framework to actually get done. What we need to do is how to make money within that framework.
Biopharma innovation: Open drug discovery? Not yet, but maybe some day
Interesting post from Joerg, who is not so sure about open innovation in drug design. He makes some good points, with the observation
And here is where I diverge. The very essence of the Creative Commons movement, the setting up of open source licenses, etc was to provide an open, legal framework for sharing content or software. Such a framework doesn’t exist in the drug discovery world, so yes, today open innovation is difficult. But that doesn’t mean it is not a goal we should not seek to attain. We need the Larry Lessig types who will push the open innovation agenda and push for and develop the appropriate frameworks that make it possible.
Why do I think so? Not because I believe open everything is better, but because the current model is broken. The level of innovation required to take the pharma industry forward is not going to be possible within the walls of an organization, especially in a world where the skills and knowledge required to develop drugs are evolving rapidly. Using some of the analogies in the original post actually illustrate that point. Chip design is terribly closed because chip innovations can be achieved in a controlled environment. Data center optimization is a proprietary thing cause it’s an unique optimization problem in many ways, although people do share pre-competitive information. Science is none of the above and needs an open framework to actually get done. What we need to do is how to make money within that framework.
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