Opening new pathways for innovation in healthcare

Is open innovation an appropriate strategy to promote innovation through Public Health Research Institutes (PHRIs) in developing countries? The goal of this article is to evaluate the effectiveness of the strategy. PHRIs in developing countries confront a variety of problems, from the need to adapt to the speed of technological innovation to insufficient technical teams and inadequate capacity caused by budget cuts and bureaucratic constraints. The article presents a case study of an open innovation initiative in a Brazilian PHRI as a strategic approach to catalyze innovation processes. This action research showed that the open innovation approach benefits innovation processes in public health in a developing country. However, if practices are merely transposed from successes in the entrepreneurial sector, for which it was originally conceived, there is significant risk of rejection from the metaphorical ‘antibodies’ in PHRIs. The open innovation approach should be treated as a continuous, rather than discrete, solution when dealing with public sector attempts to engage in innovation. The article presents aspects that need special care in order to exploit the potential for open innovation and mitigate the risk of rejection.