Johnson & Johnson (J&J) has extended its network of innovation centres – designed to forge closer ties with academic researchers – with the creation of five partnering offices in UK life science ‘hotspots’.
J&J unveiled plans earlier this year to set up four innovation centres around the world – in London, Boston, San Francisco and Shanghai – and the new UK offices will function as satellites of the main London unit. A similar approach will be taken with the other hubs, said the company.
Dr Kurt Hertogs, incubator strategy leader for the London centre, told PMLiVE the creation of its innovation centres and satellite offices “represents a new approach to collaborating aimed at advancing innovation in the earliest stages of R&D”.
The company has sent a “critical mass of teams comprised of science and business experts” to the hotspots to try to “to identify early stage innovation and support the translation of research into new products for patients,” according to Hertogs.
The new offices are situated in in Cambridge, Oxford, Manchester, Edinburgh and Cardiff and are a continuation of an open innovation approach J&J first piloted with the Stevenage Bioscience Catalyst in the UK earlier this year and are expected to be fully operational in early 2014.
Setting up centres across the world recognises that, while healthcare challenges are often global, “there are national and regional variances in the impact this has on communities and in the way the care is delivered at a local level”, he added.
J&J is keen to emphasise the autonomy of its new structure to help address those regional variances.
“Each J&J innovation centre has local deal-making capabilities with the flexibility to adapt deal structures to match early-stage opportunities and establish novel collaborations that speed development of those innovations,” according to Hertogs.
“Innovation and collaboration lie at the heart of transforming healthcare and addressing the challenges we face [as an industry],” he said.