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Open Health: Innovation in the Global Health Economy
After finishing up our Foodscapes workshop with a lively panel discussion, we kicked of our Fall Conference with dinner and a keynote address from Alph Bingham, founder of InnoCentive. InnoCentive is a leading online platform for open innovation, allowing companies that are seeking solutions to challenges to access a network of more than 125,000 potential "solvers." Alph hit on several important principles of open innovation that we will be exploring in greater depth today--the need to expand engagement with lead users, tap into collective intelligence, cooperate to compete, and engage with failure, among others.
This morning, with more than 100 people filling our meeting space at the Claremont, Jody Ranck is introducing the concept of Open Health, building on Alph's remarks from last night.
We've now moved on to a panel discussion about open innovation and new health commons. Charlotte Hess, an expert on new commons, gave an overview of the concept. Eric Wilhelm, founder of Instructables, addressed the idea of do-it-yourself communities, and the sharing of information in that context; his story about kite-surfing set the tone for his remarks. Dick Paul of Boeing talked about his experience with open innovation at a company that is process-driven and has strong IP concerns. Boeing is exploring open innovation in R&D technology development, R&D management, solving complex problems, and a distinct innovation group. After Sylvia Ernst explained how Collaborative Drug Discovery aims to create networks of chemists and other scientists to develop new drugs, a lively Q&A discussion ensued. Alph Bingham joined to the panel to field questions.
The rest of the day is devoted to unveiling our Open Health Map of Disruptive Innovation (SR-1117A), and previewing its companion, the Open Health Toolkit (SR-1117B).