learn and hopefully occasionally to teach. My online interactions are from the perspective of an individual scientist-turned-entrepreneur running a private cancer drug development company, not as the voice of the company itself. That said, I recognize that management is often assumed to speak for their organization. Perhaps the biggest step industry could make is to empower a small group of people to engage, to learn, and to chart the path forward for others in their organizations.
Failure is inevitable in drug development—only one of thousands of drugs we discover make it to market. However, the culture of the industry seems very risk-averse when it comes to communities and social media. There is no checklist, no standard operating procedure for community participation. The need to invest for the long term and the perceived risks of failure seem to be working against it, but I hope we are on the cusp of new experiments using the tools of social media as part of our efforts to help improve the lives of patients with new therapies.
If we aren’t in the conversation when things are going all right, how will we engage when things may not be going as well?
Corporate Social Media in Pharma:
[Updated to include Eli Lilly Clinical Open Innovation Twitter and blog links.]
NF = Not Found
