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In 2006, pharmaceutical innovation consultant Bernard Munos helped to launch a lively public discussion about how open innovation can bring novel drugs to market with his paper 'Can opensource R&D reinvigorate drug research? He tells Nature how things have changed since then.
A growing appreciation that cooperation and competition can coexist is transforming the life-sciences innovation landscape. Development was once shrouded in secrecy, but now organizations are coming together.
Drug discovery is time-consuming and full of blind alleys. Pharmaceutical rivals are cooperating in the early stages to accelerate and improve the efficiency of the process.
In a pioneering move, the compound JQ1 was released to the community for free. The impact that this has had on research and development is slowly coming into focus.
University research powers innovation and economic development. Countries with intensive research and development (R&D) programmes differ in their approach to turning lab studies into commercial enterprises. By Alla Katsnelson, infographic by Mohamed Ashour.
Austrian social scientist Helga Nowotny was president of the European Research Council between 2010 and 2013. Now a professor emerita of ETH Zurich and author of The Cunning of Uncertainty (Polity, 2015), Nowotny discusses the growing pressure to capitalize on academic research, and how countries can get it right in the absence of a universal recipe.
After starting one of Germany's first biotech companies, biochemist Horst Domdey co-founded BioM, a non-profit organization that has managed and developed Munich's biotechnology cluster since 1997. He talks to Nature about nurturing the entrepreneurial spirit in “a country of competitions”.
When it comes to translating its own research into practical applications, China falls short. A forum in Shanghai put the spotlight on ambitious plans to accelerate the process.
The value that Australia places on publication quality over quantity has elevated it into the top echelon of science. Can it now improve its flagging track record in commercialization?