Imagine a young,
enthusiastic scientist (I will call him Edward) sitting—Macbook in lap—on a
second hand couch in a flat just outside the walls of the his University (which
I will call Top Rank University). Just yesterday, and after little more than
one year as a post-doctoral fellow with the Department of Pathology, Edward
received his Certification of Completion of Postdoctoral Research for his
innovative work on target discovery for antibody therapeutics. Now, he sits with
his Macbook and evaluates several interesting pharmaceutical companies, one of
which will become his first employer outside academia.
A few months ago,
after entering “antibody therapeutics” into a Google search at 11pm one night,
Edward found a blog discussing the production of fully human therapeutic antibodies
from transgenic mice. Immediately, he noted that the blog was extremely
informative, simple, elegant, the #1 return from his Google search, and
maintained by an obviously social technology savvy pharmaceutical company (which
I will call SocialTech Pharma). “Cool! This is exactly the company I want to
work for,” thought Edward just before falling asleep.
Skip forward three
years, and Edward is working at SocialTech Pharma. Just three years earlier,
Edward was one of 300 scientists, representing over 40 countries and nearly
every globally prestigious academic institution, who applied for the
Immunobiology Scientist position at SocialTech Pharma. In just three years, he
helped the company pioneer the field of Rapid Fire Drug Discovery (RFDD) by
spearheading a project to create a novel automated drug discovery system called
OmniPATH.
Step back two years.
On his one-year anniversary at SocialTech Pharma, Edward received a call from
Craig Venter, who had been following SocialTech’s blog, press releases, and
progress in RFDD. This conversation between Edward and Venter initiated a
sequence of events resulting in the creation of OmniPATH. Shortly after their
first meeting at a coffee shop near by, they contacted numerous Biotech
companies and academic institutions looking for potential collaborators. It was
extraordinarily easy for Edward to find other scientists willing to partner
with SocialTech Pharma, since everyone was very familiar with and trusting of SocialTech
due to the company’s global presence and transparency within the global
scientific community, a key result of maintaining an extremely resourceful and
public company blog.
Ultimately, Edward and
Venter, together with six other scientists from SocialTech collaborated with
scientists from four partnering biotech companies and six academic institutions
to create an automated drug discovery system, OmniIPATH. OmniPATH combines
target discovery, synthetic biology, reverse immunology, and bioinformatics in
order to 1) rapidly mass produce therapeutic antibodies and vaccines to
practically any disease or pathogen, and 2) re-engineer any therapeutic
antibody or vaccine—at a moment’s notice—in response to drug immunogenicity or
evasive adaptations of a pathogen. OmniPATH rapidly carried SocialTech into
global spotlight as the leader of health care innovation, and of course a
champion of strategic social collaboration.
Obviously, this
fantastic story is completely fictional. Yet it enacts the extraordinary
benefits, or Value Creation, that can spawn from proper use of social
technologies. In July 2012, McKinsey & Company, a global management
consulting firm, released an extensive report investigating the current and
potential impact of social technologies on the economy, with emphasis on
Pharmaceutical, High Tech, Telecom, Legal, Retail, and Financial enterprises
(see The social economy: Unlocking value and productivity through socialtechnologies). McKinsey’s report
analyzed social technology usage across multiple enterprises representing
“almost 20 percent of global industry sales” and estimated that “between $900
billion and $1.3 trillion in value can be unlocked through the use of social
technology” within the examined business sectors; keeping in mind that these
figures are based on ideal conditions. Moreover, McKinsey reported “two-thirds
of the value creation opportunity afforded by social technologies lies in
improving communications and collaboration within and across enterprises.”
Social technologies,
something as simple as a company blog, if properly used and maintained, can
dramatically improve communication and collaboration both within the company
and between external parties, regardless of geographies and time zones, and “at
virtually zero marginal cost,” according to McKinsey. A successful company blog
creates a unified and powerful voice, and can serve as a cyber-conduit through
which information is immediately communicated and easily accessed at a later
time if needed.
The biggest and most
powerful impact of a company blog is EXPOSURE. By increasing its global
presence, establishing greater connections with patients and potential
collaborators, and instilling trust within local and global scientific
communities, a pharmaceutical company can exponentially increase its Value Creation potential over time. And with numerous methods of regulating blog usage,
visibility and content, the company can feel confident knowing its property and
its image are well protected.
In the fictional story
presented above, Edward chose to apply for the Immunobiology Scientist position
at SocialTech because in following the company’s blog—which lead him to the
company website, which lead him to the job posting, which prompted him to
apply—he acquired a high level of respect for and interest in the company.
Since the company blog drew considerable attention to SocialTech Pharma, Edward
found that many pharmaceuticals, biotechs, and academic institutions were
excited to collaborate or form partnerships. Due to the well-informed and
personable voice of SocialTech’s blog, most scientists Edward contacted felt as
though they already knew and trusted the company, similar to how one might feel
about a friend. Ultimately, by strategically socially collaborating and
partnering with various organizations, SocialTech was able to develop OmniPATH,
a revolutionary healthcare technology.
Of course, if anyone anywhere
wishes to know more about OmniPATH, they can simply read about it on SocialTech’s
blog.
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