R&D finds answers in the crowd

With it taking anything up to 15 years and the help of a multimillion-pound budget to bring a single product on to the market, pharmaceutical and biotech companies are understandably eager to ensure that their scientists receive the best R&D support possible. But as information professionals and researchers in R&D know only too well, the solution to a research problem cannot always be found in-house.

Outsourcing the research or a specific problem in the research is one option, but a new model of “crowdsourcing” offers businesses a way to tap into a larger, global community of scientists.

A crowdsourcer is a business that has created a global, web-based scientific community whose scientists and professionals can be challenged to solve other companies’ R&D problems. So far, chemicals and life sciences have been the main users of crowdsourcers, offering rewards of up to $1m if they are successful. Innocentive , set up by drug giant Eli Lilly in 2001, is one such crowdsourcer, and other sites, such as Nine Sigma and Yet2.com offer similar models.

There is no doubt that crowdsourcing has resulted in solutions to problems that would not have been found otherwise, but this is an evolving model that has to work hard to address concerns about commercial sensitivities, intellectual property rights and scientists’ need to build reputations, even open access to scientific collaboration.

CROWDPULLER

Innocentive is planning to expand its community of 120,000 problem solvers by recruiting information professionals to teams of solvers collaborating to produce a solution on the basis that, as information experts, infopros can identify where problem-solving data actually resides.

Innocentive CEO Dwayne Spradlin said: “The idea is that solvers will be able to create and self-organise around disciplines. Opportunities are opening up for them from R&D departments in China and India, as well as the UK and western Europe.

“The communities will require people in various roles – information providers and researchers, for example. As people self-organise it will be interesting to see how it develops, and there will be various roles to play.

“This is crowdsourcing and the network is highly diverse. The bigger it is, the more valuable it is. The diversity alone suggests that people of varying backgrounds should participate. There are people who have their finger on the pulse of what information resides where and how that information is being managed.”

However, one UK information professional in the pharmaceutical industry, who preferred not be named, said that some companies disliked employee membership of solver groups, fearing the leakage of confidential information to rivals.

“Some companies now prevent their staff from speaking at conferences, particularly commercial conferences,” the source revealed. “It would also depend on who the requester is; transparency both ways would be an important consideration. There are also liability issues: which jurisdiction, English law or US law?”

The names of the seeker companies – the crowdsourcers’ customers, who issue the R&D challenges – remain confidential throughout the challenge process. Companies that regularly post challenges include Boeing , Dow Chemical , Eli Lilly and Procter & Gamble .

Pharmaceutical company Solvay recently became an Innocentive member to crowdsolve problems with the peroxide process and additives to PVC. Anne Goldberg, technical knowledge manager at Solvay, said: “The benefits are mainly in the simultaneous access to a lot of different scientific backgrounds that could bring new perspectives on sometimes old problems.”

But she is not convinced that crowdsourcing offers a role for information professionals. “The system is dedicated to quite precise problems related to R &D and not generic ones.”

However, the cross-fertilisation of solvers from many different scientific disciplines has led to solutions from surprising sources and this has been an unforeseen benefit of the service.

In a report, entitled “ The Value of Openness in Scientific Problem Solving ”, Karim Lakhani, a lecturer in technology and innovation at MIT, found that the broadcast of problematic information to outside scientists resulted in a 29.5% resolution rate for scientific problems that had previously remained unsolved.

The study tracked 166 scientific problems from the research laboratories of 26 firms from 10 different countries and found that problem-solving success was associated with the ability to attract specialised scientists with diverse scientific interests. Successful solvers created solutions to problems that were on the boundary or outside of their fields of expertise.

But there is a fear that financial incentive-based initiatives could end up diverting open scientific collaboration into closed communications.

REPUTATION NETWORKS

Other fledgling scientific communities may not offer direct financial incentives but there is a shared recognition of the need to incentivise collaboration. Nature Publishing Group , for example, has recently set up Nature Network forums for scientists. It plans to recruit scientists by placing the forums next to job adverts and content, although reputational boost will be the main incentive for scientists to contribute.

“The key difference is that Nature Network is mostly made up of academics, and their market is in reputation, it is not a straight financial market,” said Nature Network publisher Timo Hannay. “It’s a way of building up reputation by sharing ideas and being seen to be someone who does good work, resulting in winning grant funding.”

Innocentive plans to weigh up the reaction to its solver groups before creating the next-generation mechanisms. “We need to evolve the multiparty incentive mechanism and we think reputation will be important,” said Spradlin. “There will be a cachet to being a top solver.

“We are looking at a points system. When you submit a solution or when a solver has expressed an interest and will work in a project group, he or she may attract points. Maybe there will be points for opening project rooms, or seekers might start rating solvers.”

But Solvay’s Goldberg said: “I am not convinced about that. Until now, the scientific community has recognised its peers through their publications, and therefore their public contribution to building common knowledge in a certain field. I doubt that it will provoke a change in the perception of scientific reputation, at least in the mid-term.”

Until now Innocentive has not been a source of information about scientific developments as its solutions have been commercially sensitive. But after a recent deal with the Rockefeller Foundation, hundreds of non-profit organisations will be able to use the site to post development problems and share the resulting solutions. It is part of a Rockefeller initiative aimed at promoting innovation in a way that will spur development on behalf of poor and vulnerable populations around the world.

Innocentive has built an active crowdsourcing marketplace and is encouraging more information professionals to participate as seekers and solvers. For some, it could be a useful extra string to their information sourcing bow.

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