ABSTRACT
The R&D environment in the Pharmaceutical Industry is unique: one in 10,000 potential products make it to market, it takes at least ten years for them to get there, and a successful product can cost upwards of 500 million dollar to develop. This chapter explores three scenarios that reflect the role of Knowledge Management in R&D. First scenario describes how Knowledge Management-related techniques have helped people to access, connect and derive new knowledge from the vast volume of data and documents generated in the course of Drug Discovery and Development. Project teams could be described as the engine of R&D: they bring together the people with the range of disciplines required to come up with a new drug. Third scenario traces one individual's experience of different kinds of collaborative models: between a technology company and the Pharmaceutical Industry, between academia and pharma, and in one of the many bioincubator campuses emerging in the UK and elsewhere.
