Open Science and Open Innovation in the Life Sciences - ESRC Cross-Linking Grant

Investments in the United Kingdom’s bioeconomy are expected to deliver significant socio-economic benefits through innovations in health, agriculture and the environment. These investments are increasingly tied to the promotion of ‘open innovation’ in emerging fields including systems and synthetic biology, epigenetics and transcriptomics. Open innovation is supposed to improve collaboration between scientists working at the frontiers of knowledge, while optimising pathways to rapid commercialisation of beneficial products and services. Yet widespread adoption of open innovation in emerging life science is uncharted territory. Will emerging science flourish and innovation be stimulated in an open innovation bioeconomy? This question will be investigated in cross-­‐investment work capitalising on the strengths of the University of Exeter’s ESRC Egenis Centre and the University of Edinburgh’s ESRC Innogen Centre. In the first of two closely interconnected research activities, analysis of recent published science and interviews with key scientists will provide a structured mapping of the trajectories of emerging life science and their interconnections. In the second, systematic foresight analysis will be used to explore opportunities and barriers in innovation for the bioeconomy. Together, these research activities will explore whether and how open innovation policies and practices change the goals and organisation of science and scientists’ collaborations, and whether and how innovation strategies adapt to changed intellectual property regimes associated with the creation of knowledge networks and markets. Specific topics will include, for example, exploration of the central assertion of the RCUK open access policy, that “[f]ree and open access to the outputs of publicly-­funded research offers significant social and economic benefits” by stimulating creativity and discovery in emerging science while promoting the objectives of open innovation. This project will explore expectations of socio-­economic benefits arising from the bioeconomy as new scientific priorities emerge in an evolving science policy context.