INSEAD, the international business school, and GlaxoSmithKline, one of the world’s leading pharmaceutical and healthcare companies, today announced a new GlaxoSmithKline Chair in Corporate Innovation at INSEAD. GlaxoSmithKline has established the Chair with a €3 million gift to support knowledge creation at INSEAD targeted at innovation management. This endowment builds on GlaxoSmithKline‘s longstanding relationship with INSEAD.
Innovation is a crucial competitive advantage in business today; for the pharmaceutical sector it is essential to develop and deliver new medicines. GlaxoSmithKline has already pioneered ways to make research units more entrepreneurial including the creation of Centres of Excellence in Drug Discovery.
With the creation of the Chair in Corporate Innovation, GlaxoSmithKline gives permanent support to an important area of research at INSEAD and the work of the Chair holder in particular. GlaxoSmithKline and INSEAD have identified the following areas for this collaboration:
* Issues of innovation in drug discovery (including the tension between creativity and large scale industrial screening of molecules
* Project management, risk management and structured experimentation in clinical development to enhance performance
* Questions of market introduction, such as pricing and channels, especially in fragmented healthcare markets such as Europe.
Christoph Loch, Professor of Technology and Operations Management, has been appointed as the first GlaxoSmithKline Chaired Professor in Corporate Innovation.
A leader in his field, Professor Loch has worked closely with the pharmaceutical industry over many years. His most recent book* deals with project management in an environment of uncertainty and he has a special interest in the special management challenges presented by organisations that are heavily focused on research and development. Professor Loch will also become Dean of the INSEAD PhD Programme as of September 2006.
Jean-Pierre Garnier, CEO of GlaxoSmithKline, commented: “Embracing new thinking from bodies such as INSEAD challenges our approach and stimulates the entrepreneurial spirit we have worked so hard to foster. Innovation is at the heart of GlaxoSmithKline and is responsible for our ever strengthening new product pipeline. This endowment is an illustration of our commitment to furthering this way of working. We look forward to working with INSEAD and seeing the fruits of our collaboration.
Gabriel Hawawini, Dean of INSEAD, said: "We are very grateful to GlaxoSmithKline for their generous gift to INSEAD, and for the confidence the company has shown in our school. Independent academic institutions - such as our own - rely increasingly on the foresight and commitment of partners like GlaxoSmithKline in their pursuit of research excellence and relevance. Hence our current fundraising campaign, to which this gift is a significant contribution."
About GlaxoSmithKline
GlaxoSmithKline - one of the world's leading research-based pharmaceutical and healthcare companies is committed to improving the quality of human life by enabling people to do more, feel better, and live longer. For company information, visit GlaxoSmithKline at http://www.gsk.com.
