Experiments in Open Innovation at Harvard Medical School

What happens when an elite academic institution starts to rethink how research gets done?

EVA GUINAN, KEVIN J. BOUDREAU AND KARIM R. LAKHANI

HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL SEEMS an unlikely organization to open up its innovation process. By most measures, the more than 20,000 faculty, research staff and graduate students affiliated with Harvard Medical School are already world class and at the top of the medical research game, with approximately $1.4 billion in annual funding from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH).

But in February 2010, Drew Faust, president of Harvard University, sent an email invitation to all faculty, staff and students at the university (more than 40,000 individuals) ...