Open Innovation

Globally, innovation space is undergoing major transformation with the concept of 'open innovation' gathering attention both from academia and industry. Tendency of highly educated workforce shifting jobs have prevented companies to preserve their knowledgebase acquired over the years. Further, availability of venture capital to support promising ideas and technologies, and develop them to entrepreneurial firms has also increased tremendously in last one decade. As a result of this silent revolution in innovation sphere, the concept of 'closed innovation' is making way to 'open innovation'. Chesbrough, who coined the term "Open Innovation" explains this growing phenomenon more succinctly in his book "Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology" published in 2003.

With the success of open innovations such as Linux Operating System, Android mobile operating system, Human genome Sequencing, Open Source Drug Discovery (OSDD) programme etc., there is a need to begin an open innovation space for drug discovery facilitating unlimited exchange of ideas for development of novel solutions in the field of healthcare. Innovative solutions developed in open platforms may (in principle) bring in a promising change in the innovation sphere, which offers cheap solutions to the population in third world and developing countries. At the same time, it offers tremendous opportunity to start and nourish entrepreneurship in the healthcare sector.