The Institute of Pharmaceutical Innovation

Monday 25th January, 2010 Successful open innovation workshop run in China as part of Science Bridges Programme

Science Bridges ran their first open innovation workshop in China in December 2009 leading to the potential for 6 projects with the University of Bradford and an offer of additional funding from the Changzhou city government. This very positive start is great encouragement for broadening open innovation programmes out across the UK and China.

A short video of this event has been produced and can be viewed on the Changzhou government website. To view the video please click here.

As a consequence of the workshop, 6 potential open innovation projects were generated, with collaboration between Bradford academics and leading Chinese institutions. The Changzhou city government was very pleased with the workshop process and the outcome. Together with the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Science and Changzhou city, the University of Bradford will aim to complete the review of project applications in March 2010 and Changzhou will then release committed funding to successful applications later this year.

The workshop consisted of a 3-day programme: Day 1. getting to know each other and outlining scientific interest and capabilities; Day 2. speed match-making; Day 3. Selecting/refining collaboration projects and identifying project teams. The design of the workshop focused on creating an atmosphere conducive to dialogue and creativity with an efficient process to ensure the exchange of ideas and the generation of collaborative projects between participants from both UK and China. Feedback from the participants was very positive. In particular, many Chinese participants expressed great interest in the design and style of the workshop and said this was very different from workshops/seminars they have previously experienced.

As the Changzhou workshop is the first Science Bridges open innovation workshop, this success should provide us with great encouragement to establish a broader open innovation programme across UK and China. We have demonstrated our ability to overcome cultural and language issues while running an efficient workshop across two nations and generating candidate projects of considerable scientific and commercial interest. After the workshop, a senior officer from Jiangsu province expressed a great interest to exploring further opportunities to collaborate with us.

Around 80 representatives from academic institutions, pharmaceutical companies and governmental organisations attended the opening ceremony on the first day. Senior officers from Ministry of Science & Technology of China, Jiangsu province, Changzhou city, RCUK Beijing office and UKTI gave speeches at the opening ceremony. At the subsequent closed door meeting which was only open to pre-selected candidates with the signing of the CDA, 5 academic experts participated from Bradford (Prof. Peter York, Prof. Laurence Patterson, Prof. Anant Paradkar , Dr. Marcel de Matas and Dr. Lyn Daintree), 11 from seven Chinese leading research institutions and 4 Changzhou based pharmaceutical companies.

The following Chinese research institutions participated in the event:
•Shengyang pharmaceutical University
•Jilin Univeristy
•Nanjing University
•Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine
•Southwest Jiaotong University
•Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Science
•Hefei Industrial Pharmaceutical Institute