Critical success factors for open source innovation in pharma industry: learning from two case studies
Abstract
Purpose
The study aims to add to the body of knowledge of open source tangible product management (also called open design). The objective is also to develop a guideline for efficient open source tangible product development and adoption.
Design/methodology/approach
The exploratory research design using secondary data (like newspapers, magazines, research articles, bogs, papers, etc.) is used to analyze open source tangible product design challenges and enablers. The success stories of Open Source Software projects (OSS) were studied for identification of critical success factors and further their relevancy was tested in the two popular cases of open source drug discovery (malaria and tuberculosis)
Findings
Open innovation has become a part of competitive strategy of current businesses. It requires an efficient intellectual property protection regime for its implementation. However, in a market dominated by proprietary benefits, the open source technology development can serve as remedy for innovation needs of neglected sectors. The OSS literature revealed managing two classes of factors, namely technology sponsor level factors and environmental factors for efficiency and effectiveness. The case study analysis in the context of applicability of these OSS critical factors showed their limitations in open source tangible products, and highlighted understanding additional challenges and remedies.
Research limitations/implications
Open source innovation is a collaborative effort involving inputs from various/diverse players, hence monitoring the effort and motivation level of the contributors is a cumbersome task. Only the information that is available online and in print media is taken as research inputs in this work. Also the data taken were from two case studies; a lot more case studies in the open design domain can progress the theory. The implications of this study are far-reaching in the areas where profit motivated proprietary efforts lack in addressing societal need. It provides guidelines for addressing those unmet needs by developing products in a collaborative way without intellectual property hurdles.
Originality/value
The essence of open design is becoming more vital, and there is a pressing need to build theory to support it, which still is elusive and dispersed. The study fills the gap using secondary data and case study approach.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers, Associate Editor, and Editor-in-Chief for their valuable comments and suggestions that helped to improve the manuscript.
Funding: The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
Declaration of conflicting interests: The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
Citation
Jha, A., Sharma, R.R.K. and Kumar, V. (2022), "Critical success factors for open source innovation in pharma industry: learning from two case studies", The TQM Journal, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/TQM-08-2021-0223
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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