believes scientists will continue to be attracted to InnoCentive—
and not just for the money.
“Some scientists see InnoCentive as a chance to be a free
agent. Others use it to bring recognition and reward to their own
organizations, but every solver who logs in does it at least in part,
I think, for the sheer joy of trying to solve a difficult problem,”
he says.
Clinical Trials: Ripe for CollaborationClinical trials, during which physicians administer a potential new
drug to human volunteers in clinics and hospitals, are the costliest
and most time-intensive phase in the development of any new
medicine. Furthermore, as pharmaceutical companies pursue solu-
tions to increasingly complex diseases, more procedures and more
patients per trial are required.
To improve both the speed and the effectiveness of its global
clinical trials, Lilly has gone online again, this time using a licensed
“Web discussion tool” called CompanyWay. The tool has been
used several times to create a global community among the several
hundred clinical research physicians (CRPs) Lilly employs to over-
see clinical studies of investigational products.
CompanyWay builds on the “swarm theory,” in which popula-
tions of individuals self-organize, solve problems, and achieve new
levels of collective intelligence with minimal hierarchy or central
organization. It enables CRPs to collaborate on trial protocols and
to share their methodologies and findings quickly and fluidly.
Furthermore, CRPs can provide each other with peer evaluations
by “voting” an assigned value or merit to specific ideas posted on
the site.
“In the past, the difficulty of getting CRPs together meant that
most trial protocols were dictated by headquarters in Indianapolis,”
notes Dr. Allan Weinstein, vice president for clinical research and
regulatory affairs in most of Lilly’s non-U.S. operations. A U.S. bias
is undesirable, he says, because definitions of diseases, symptoms in
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