Dirk Voelkel

Managing Open Innovation in Biotechnology

OVERVIEW: In the increasingly competitive landscape, there is a growing demand for companies to be innovative. However, the concept of innovation is confounded by the central question of what makes a product innovative. If innovation is defined as the commercialization of an enabling technology that provides the customer with new capability, then there are two key requisites for innovation: customer insight to identify unmet need, and technology awareness to identify the respective enabling technology. Drivers for innovation can be thought of as any force that links customer need uniquely with an enabling technology solution; this region of overlap is described as the innovation space. Roche Diagnostics manages the challenges of sourcing external technologies by leveraging these drivers through comprehensive technology evaluation.