The Importance of Open Innovation in Neuroscience

13th Sep 2018

In the pharmaceutical industry patenting strategies limit the chance to investigate potential drug targets and new hypotheses, therefore restraining innovation dramatically.  

And that is where open innovation is crucial. Open innovation: “The process of innovating with others for shared risk and reward to produce mutual benefits for each organisation, creating new products, processes or ideas that could not otherwise have been achieved alone, or enabling them to be achieved more quickly, cheaply or efficiently.” (Pigott et al., 2014) - in other words: cooperation in innovation that helps both parties. 

This new article by Hunter, Lee and Bountra (2018), published in the BNA’s journal ‘Brain and Neuroscience Advances’, provides an elaborate summary of why open innovation is more important than ever for neuroscience and an overview of currently used techniques to achieve this. 

The article mentions several initiatives taken to increase open innovation, such as precompetitive research collaborations (e.g. the Innovative Medicines Initiative): Unpublished results and techniques are shared between the organisations involved, resulting in a quicker and more thorough exploration of a topic. 

Another example discussed is crowdsourcing, where expertise from other companies is combined to complete a project. 

While this looks promising, open innovation needs to reach a larger scale soon to help develop new treatments for neurological and psychiatric disorders in the near future. 

For the full review article, click here

Hunter, A.J., Lee, W.H., Bountra, C., 2018. Open innovation in neuroscience research and drug discovery. Brain and Neuroscience Advances, 2