Creating a Culture of Productivity and Collaborative Innovation

As six months have now elapsed since its initial publication in the peer-reviewed journal Research-Technology Management (RTM), we reproduce here the full text of the paper authored by myself and Timo Lotta. This paper documents a comprehensive case study of how Orion Pharma’s R&D organization was transformed to implement a results-oriented “open R&D” model through proactive culture change.

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Common Misconceptions in Strategic Innovation Initiatives

Initiatives to cultivate innovation are rapidly proliferating. From my regular dialogue with Marketing and R&D executives of science/technology-based organizations, I notice many initiatives are built on at least one of these underlying assumptions:

  1. Innovation can be Outsourced
  2. Ideation = Innovation
  3. Technological Novelty = Innovation

Per se, these assumptions are perfectly good starting points – the mistake is to believe that’s all you have to focus on.
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Two Decades of Biomedical R&D Improvement Initiatives

Throughout the past two decades, biomedical companies have learnt painfully that industrialized management of R&D does not deliver. Using illustrations from the pharmaceutical sector, this article looks back on the principal approaches that were adopted to transform R&D productivity over this period. We reflect on what has definitely not worked well, and in consequence, we discuss how the emphasis is now shifting back to people, relying on human ingenuity and teamwork to innovate – through focus and an open architecture. We conclude by identifying the key success factors and the new challenges that R&D leaders need to manage.

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Igniting Sustainable Change in Scientific & Technical Organizations

Whether driven by pre-emptive thinking or business pressures, many scientific and technical organizations need to raise their game. Under the banner of contemporary catchphrases such as “open innovation”, “customer centric product development”, “strategic outsourcing”, “customer partnering” and “R&D transformation”, such organizations have been striving to initiate change programs for achieving the same two age-old aims:

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