ESRC Cross-Investment Grant on Open Innovation

1 April 2013 - 31 March 2014

PI/s in Exeter: Professor John Dupré

CI/s in Exeter: Professor Sabina Leonelli

Research partners: Professor David Castle (University of Edinburgh)

Funding awarded: £ 158,000

Sponsor(s): ESRC

About the research

John Dupre, Sabina Leonelli, and David Castle at Edinburgh (Innogen Centre) have received an ESRC Cross-Investment award. Titled, 'ESRC Cross-Investment Grant on Open Innovation', they will be looking at construals of openness in biological research and comparing ideas and practices around Open Data with ideas and practices around Open Innovation.

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. Capitalising on the complementary strengths of Egenis and Edinburgh's Innogen Centre, this project will explore the question whether emerging science will flourish, and innovation be stimulated, in an open innovation bioeconomy?