Search

This paper presents an approach developed by the Innogen Centre for the analysis of systems of innovation. The approach, developed through the study of innovation in the life sciences, is unique in that it features a triangular view, alongside consideration of the behaviours and interactions between innovators, regulators and policymakers, and advocacy and public interest groups. Furthermore, while the approach can be characterised as co-evolutionary and system-based, it also allows for the user to shift from the macro to micro – considering the impact of institutions on actors and innovation within an institutional milieu, but also considering the individual behaviours and business plans or actions of the actors involved. This paper presents both the approach itself and how the approach was developed.

Networked models are often proposed as a means to enhance health research capacity-building in Africa. This paper addresses a knowledge gap on what works and does not in capacity-building in African research settings. It provides an analysis of how multi-partner networks are built and how their success depends on building institutional level capacity-strengthening within partner institutions. To do this, the paper focuses on the Wellcome Trust's African Institutions initiative, drawing on initial learning and evaluation project data. We identify priority areas for policy attention and share emerging early insights on mechanisms and strategies being implemented by consortia to address key challenges.

This paper presents an approach developed by the Innogen Centre for the analysis of systems of innovation. The approach, developed through the study of innovation in the life sciences, is unique in that it features a triangular view, alongside consideration of the behaviours and interactions between innovators, regulators and policymakers, and advocacy and public interest groups. Furthermore, while the approach can be characterised as co-evolutionary and system-based, it also allows for the user to shift from the macro to micro – considering the impact of institutions on actors and innovation within an institutional milieu, but also considering the individual behaviours and business plans or actions of the actors involved. This paper presents both the approach itself and how the approach was developed.

This study examines decision making in large and small firms undertaking biotechnology innovation and identifies factors influencing innovation. It also considers aspects of environments external to firms, but relevant to the process of innovation. The study suggests that innovation is best understood as process of change both within the firm and in the external environment. Factors internal to firms influencing key decisions included economic and political evaluations, company culture, organization, and in large firms, previous areas of corporate activity. A scarcity of appropriate knowledge relating to technical and non-technical aspects of innovation acted as severe restraints to Dedicated Biotechnology Firms (DBFs). Factors external to firms shaping decisions about the technology included changes in the socio-economic and political environment, risk regulation and patenting. Lack of funding and difficulties associated with venture capital constituted additional hurdles for DBFs. The findings of the study highlight a series of erroneous assumptions built into the linear model of innovation. The cumulative nature of innovation and the importance of 'learning by doing' constitute elements of the critique of the linear model. For related reasons, some Post Fordist theories of current change in advanced industrialized countries, particularly those which advocate flexible specialization as a new model for industrial growth also prove problematic.

This paper argues that the development of targeted health technologies for poor people will require a new mix of technology, organizations and institutions which we conceptualize as new social technologies. Using a technology–market matrix, we explore these new social technologies which may sometimes include multi-national companies but are also associated with developing country private sector firms and not-for-profit product development partnerships. The paper argues that these collaborative forms of social technology are most likely to generate and deliver new physical technologies and innovation processes required by low-income users.

Between 1970 and 2000, the proportion of global R&D occurring in low income economies rose from two percent to more than 20 percent. However, this rising commitment to R&D does not easily translate into the emergence of a family of innovations meeting the needs of low income consumers “at the bottom of the pyramid”, since much of these technological resources are invested in outdated structures of innovation. A growing number of transnational corporations are targeting these markets reflecting dynamic new currents in best-practice innovation. Yet it is our contention that much of the previously dominant innovation value chains are either ignorant of the needs of consumers at the bottom of the pyramid, or lack the technologies and organisational structures to meet these needs effectively. Instead, the firms and value chains which are likely to be most successful in these dynamic new markets are those which are emerging in China and India, disrupting global corporate and locational hierarchies of innovation.

This is a report commissioned by the OECD. Innogen was asked to write a scenario report for the OECD International Futures Programme to consider the pathways that health biotechnologies could follow, the future trajectory of the bio-economy primarily in the context of human health and the likely societal, economic and policy impacts of these projected outcomes, focusing on the period 2015 to 2030 . We chose as a starting point a world health care system that, from the perspective of potential impacts of biotechnology, has been mainly under the influence of the innovation model of the multinational drug companies. To date the scope and inventiveness of this model has been constrained by the expensive and lengthy regulatory systems that act as a barrier to entry for small companies that could challenge the industry status quo and our report focuses on the need for regulatory change as a prelude to the emergence of a new, more radically innovative, health care sector. In the absence of such change our scenario predicts a health care sector that is increasingly populated by pharmaceutical commodity producers, research and development focused on incremental, piecemeal change, lack of both public and private sector funding, dysfunctional competition within and between companies and adversarial relationships with regulators. A radical change scenario on the other hand “Networked Health Care” would depend on regulatory agencies collaborating, as an integral component of the innovation system, in the proactive development of new, smarter regulatory approaches to the generation of benefits based on fundamental discoveries in life sciences. Our report describes the pre-conditions needed to lead to the more positive scenario and the roles of key actors in promoting or resisting such changes.

Scientific and technological breakthroughs do not necessarily lead to the public’s access to a new product. There is no automatic, smooth transfer from laboratory to product, and then to delivery and uptake by the user. For useful innovation and product development to happen funding, regulatory, production and delivery issues need to be resolved not only by African governments but also the international community, industry and civil society. In this paper we address three questions around this issue of transfer or rather translation, since changes needed are more systemic and more complex than simple transfer: which technologies do health experts consider have the greatest potential to address Africa’s health challenges; what are perceived to be the main barriers and challenges to developing or accessing those technologies; and what can be learnt from existing initiatives which are aimed at producing, supporting or promoting the procurement and application of science and technology (S&T) advances. To help us answer the questions we carried out a Delphi-type survey of more than 100 experts – especially focusing on prominent scientists and health policy makers in Africa and those working in global initiatives – and an extensive literature review.

Communication is essential to making biotechnology and genomics relevant to developing countries and poor people. Few would disagree with that. But many are sceptical about public relations efforts to impose inappropriate technological 'solutions' on developing countries. This paper is a partial reflection on how PR and advocacy 'mixes' can be understood and whether they can be useful to innovation in developing country contexts. This paper has several aims: First to consider why communication has become more important in the area of innovation and development; Second, we look at how two biotechnology related public-private partnerships have used public relations and advocacy to further innovation in development and pose some questions about complicated aspects of communication, technological innovation and development. We suggest that it is increasingly difficult to classify communication efforts associated with technology for development initiatives as PR or advocacy or according to the preconceived notions about who the messenger might be; Third we look at some of the methodological and theoretical implications of the analysis. Discourse analysis, which encourages us to unwrap layers of meaning in the text but which often treats texts in the abstract, unrelated to broader institutional developments or to ‘evidence’ of any kind, is of limited help in achieving a more grounded analysis of communication efforts. Communication and voice are essential 'capabilities' in development and we suggest that we need a more sophisticated approach to thinking about communication capabilities as technical, and social and political.

Trade liberalisation and changes in the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) have fashioned new dynamics in the pharmaceutical industry across the globe. Firms are forced to bring changes to their research, innovation, technology and marketing practices by a reconfiguration of their competencies and resources. The most common strategic concern that Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) has raised for Indian firms is the perceived need for R&D and technological strength. For firms that have given little attention to research and innovation in the past, this transition is very difficult. Indian firms have responded to these changes in novel and complex ways. Employing firm-level case studies, this paper examines the contemporary strategic approaches adopted by Indian leaders for integrating new knowledge and capabilities in order to develop innovation competencies for tomorrow. Using empirical evidence from firm-level investigations, this paper shows how Indian firms are evolving from reverse engineering outfits catering to domestic market to technologically advanced and sophisticated organisations capable of catering to diverse markets.

Since the development of the national systems of innovation theory in the early 1990’s there has been a succession of attempts to research the systemic dimension of innovation at many different levels of economy and society. More recently, there has been some shift in the academic and policy debate on innovation from a more traditional systems approach to ecologies and/or ecosystems. The latter are concepts transferred from the world of biology to the social world in order to explain the evolutionary nature of interrelations between different individuals, their innovative activities and their environment. This paper evaluates the concept of knowledge ecology and the related implications for innovation systems theory on two fundamental grounds: firstly, on the grounds of theoretical plausibility and conceptual consistency; secondly, on empirical grounds of the case of public-private interrelations of biotech innovation in Cambridge. The paper argues that the concept of knowledge ecology and the associated version of innovation systems theory can lead to problems of reductionism and functionalism. This is due to its development in abstraction from more grounded analysis of historical processes of capitalism. Knowledge and innovation need to be looked at in the context of historically founded processes of economic and social development.

Trade liberalisation and changes in the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) have fashioned new dynamics in the pharmaceutical industry across the globe. Firms are forced to bring changes to their research, innovation, technology and marketing practices by a reconfiguration of their competencies and resources. The most common strategic concern that Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) has raised for Indian firms is the perceived need for R&D and technological strength. For firms that have given little attention to research and innovation in the past, this transition is very difficult. Indian firms have responded to these changes in novel and complex ways. Employing firm-level case studies, this paper examines the contemporary strategic approaches adopted by Indian leaders for integrating new knowledge and capabilities in order to develop innovation competencies for tomorrow. Using empirical evidence from firm-level investigations, this paper shows how Indian firms are evolving from reverse engineering outfits catering to domestic market to technologically advanced and sophisticated organisations capable of catering to diverse markets.

This working paper provides a work-in-progress overview of research on the application of scenario-building techniques to the problem of the undertreatment of cancer pain in Tanzania. The paper draws on field and documentary research in Tanzania and the UK; on an earlier research dissemination workshop; and on scenarios development exercises within the international Innovation for Cancer Care in Africa (ICCA) project. This research is part of the wider ICCA project that brings together researchers from Tanzania, Kenya, India and the UK to address the opportunities and challenges of linking industry and health systems in order to widen access to cancer care, including innovative use of scenario-building techniques. Research in 2019 with cancer patients and health professionals, and workshop dissemination of early results to stakeholders in Tanzania, identified undertreatment of pain as a major concern within cancer care. Interviews identified opiate medication as a key resource for treatment of severe pain, and a lack of local production capability for opiate medication leading to a reliance on imports. The research also made visible the complexity of interacting health system and industrial supply factors that contribute to undertreatment of severe pain, including pricing, accessibility challenges, supply chains difficulties, perceptions of opiate medication, and skills and training challenges facing health professionals and policymakers. This paper frames pain management as a policy topic specifically in need of evidence-based contributions that can identify key innovations that can be considered by policy makers and their potential outcome. We show that scenario-building can map critical interactions: both those generating undertreatment and those arising from innovations. The paper also identifies areas where further information is required to complete the scenarios in a form that can be used by policy makers. This project aims to demonstrate the usefulness and a

This study examines decision making in large and small firms undertaking biotechnology innovation and identifies factors influencing innovation. It also considers aspects of environments external to firms, but relevant to the process of innovation. The study suggests that innovation is best understood as process of change both within the firm and in the external environment. Factors internal to firms influencing key decisions included economic and political evaluations, company culture, organization, and in large firms, previous areas of corporate activity. A scarcity of appropriate knowledge relating to technical and non-technical aspects of innovation acted as severe restraints to Dedicated Biotechnology Firms (DBFs). Factors external to firms shaping decisions about the technology included changes in the socio-economic and political environment, risk regulation and patenting. Lack of funding and difficulties associated with venture capital constituted additional hurdles for DBFs. The findings of the study highlight a series of erroneous assumptions built into the linear model of innovation. The cumulative nature of innovation and the importance of 'learning by doing' constitute elements of the critique of the linear model. For related reasons, some Post Fordist theories of current change in advanced industrialized countries, particularly those which advocate flexible specialization as a new model for industrial growth also prove problematic.

This paper argues that the development of targeted health technologies for poor people will require a new mix of technology, organizations and institutions which we conceptualize as new social technologies. Using a technology–market matrix, we explore these new social technologies which may sometimes include multi-national companies but are also associated with developing country private sector firms and not-for-profit product development partnerships. The paper argues that these collaborative forms of social technology are most likely to generate and deliver new physical technologies and innovation processes required by low-income users.

Networked models are often proposed as a means to enhance health research capacity-building in Africa. This paper addresses a knowledge gap on what works and does not in capacity-building in African research settings. It provides an analysis of how multi-partner networks are built and how their success depends on building institutional level capacity-strengthening within partner institutions. To do this, the paper focuses on the Wellcome Trust's African Institutions initiative, drawing on initial learning and evaluation project data. We identify priority areas for policy attention and share emerging early insights on mechanisms and strategies being implemented by consortia to address key challenges.

Communication is essential to making biotechnology and genomics relevant to developing countries and poor people. Few would disagree with that. But many are sceptical about public relations efforts to impose inappropriate technological 'solutions' on developing countries. This paper is a partial reflection on how PR and advocacy 'mixes' can be understood and whether they can be useful to innovation in developing country contexts. This paper has several aims: First to consider why communication has become more important in the area of innovation and development; Second, we look at how two biotechnology related public-private partnerships have used public relations and advocacy to further innovation in development and pose some questions about complicated aspects of communication, technological innovation and development. We suggest that it is increasingly difficult to classify communication efforts associated with technology for development initiatives as PR or advocacy or according to the preconceived notions about who the messenger might be; Third we look at some of the methodological and theoretical implications of the analysis. Discourse analysis, which encourages us to unwrap layers of meaning in the text but which often treats texts in the abstract, unrelated to broader institutional developments or to ‘evidence’ of any kind, is of limited help in achieving a more grounded analysis of communication efforts. Communication and voice are essential 'capabilities' in development and we suggest that we need a more sophisticated approach to thinking about communication capabilities as technical, and social and political.