BioCentury
ARTICLE | Strategy

The Sharing Economy

Pharma is opening up its libraries to draw in external partners

December 7, 2016 9:45 PM UTC

Arguably the biggest indicator that pharmas have shed the isolationist, know-it-all attitudes that drove their strategies for decades is the growth of compound-sharing initiatives to spur drug discovery. A handful of companies is leading the way in rethinking the risk of disclosing once highly guarded information, positioning the exchange of assets for expertise as the acme of open innovation.

In opening their libraries to the external community companies are all but acknowledging their own limitations, inviting others to find fruit where they themselves failed. ...