Management Life Sciences Innovations

Course goals

• Elaborate on diverse theories and insights about the management of innovation processes in the life sciences sector.
• Analyze developments in life sciences innovation processes by applying these theories.
• Reflect on the extent to which innovation theories are useful to analyse specific innovations in the life sciences.
• Communicate about the results of the analysis of life sciences innovations in the form of a paper and a presentation.

Content

The life sciences cover a wide range of science and business, and have applications in healthcare, agriculture/food and industrial production. In this course we focus on studying (bio)pharmaceutical products and medical technology, including new medicines, diagnostic devices, digital health (eHealth/mHealth), artificial intelligence and 3D printing of biomaterials. If possible, we also address innovations in green (agriculture/food) and white (industrial) biotech.
With this focus on innovating in the life sciences we put two aspects of this sector central. First, life sciences innovations are strongly founded on science, leading companies to be characterized as ‘science-based’. Second, we emphasize the business models and strategies of stakeholders in the life sciences, such as large pharmaceutical companies, smaller biotechnology companies, (university) hospitals and public-private research consortia. In these strategies collaborations with other parties, knowledge management, intellectual property right, pipeline management and portfolio management play a significant role. In addition, attention is paid to specific challenges of and preconditions for innovating in the life sciences, such as a heterogeneous set of involved users of innovations, the important role of regulations and ethics, and the rise of new (data)platform technologies and services.
This course sets out to cover these characteristics and challenges of innovation processes in the life sciences sector. We also specifically aim to study the changing context of these processes, e.g. regarding dealing with uncertainties, specialized knowledge, globalization, converging technologies, and management of interactions between a diverse group of stakeholders including entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, scientists, research institutes, and policymakers.

This course contains an Honours component.

This course is an entry requirement for:

• Innovatieproject 2 (GEO3-2226)

Please note:  this course is taught in Dutch if there are only Dutch-speaking students.