Marie Louise Conradsen is Head of Open Science at Aarhus University (Denmark). Since 2016, she has led the university’s use of “open innovation in science” as a new model for IP-free industry collaboration – within several research areas incl. material sciences, food, drug discovery and carbon capture. The Open Discovery Innovation Network (ODIN) project was established in January 2020 at Aarhus University with a three-year grant of DKK 54.5 million from the Novo Nordisk Foundation. The purpose was to accelerate the creation of a better knowledge foundation for drug discovery, by allowing university researchers and industrial investigators to crowdsource input and collaboration partners to solve complex research problems in precompetitive, “high-risk/high-gain” research projects that would otherwise not have occurred on market terms. The knowledge generated in these projects act as important building blocks for downstream innovation – and the project participants must share their results with the public – entirely without intellectual property rights. While the building blocks are important facilitators of subsequent product development, they will not become integral parts of the final products in a manner that companies need to protect intellectually. The projects can therefore be done openly in an effort to accelerate and collectively validate a public knowledge foundation that can de-risk downstream innovation. To this end, ODIN has provided a “patent-free” legal frame, a digital ideation platform, structured ideation events, as well as handheld matchmaking of industrial needs and academic ideas/competencies. Moreover, ODIN provides funding for co-created research projects selected on a competitive basis. She holds a PhD from Copenhagen Business School and a MSc in Molecular Biology and The History of Science from Aarhus University.

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