How R&D Consortia Orchestrate the Alzheimer’s Knowledge Ecosystem

What is it about?

Orchestrating an ecosystem requires coordination to create value, but prior research has tended to emphasize centralized ecosystem control over solutions involving distributed governance. By studying multilateral public-private collaborations to develop scientific knowledge to find a cure for Alzheimer’s disease, we identify a new model of ecosystem control—indirect and distributed governance using R&D consortia. We report archival and interview data on 46 consortia with overlapping corporate, nonprofit, and governmental membership. We find three models of consortia that allow member organizations to jointly orchestrate an ecosystem without centralized control. We discuss the broader implications of this model for orchestrating ecosystems.

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Why is it important?

------------------------------------------------------- Contribution to Academic Scholarship ------------------------------------------------------- Our article adds to the ecosystem literature by identifying a new model for ecosystem orchestration: the indirect and distributed model of governance. In contrast to centrally controlled ecosystems or those which rely on market mechanisms, when faced with an exceptionally complex problem, multiple actors can orchestrate the ecosystem through a distributed model involving a network of overlapping R&D consortia. Our paper also extends consortium research by identifying three types of consortia and describing the unique approach each brings to ecosystem orchestration. ------------------------------------------------------- Contribution to Management Practice ------------------------------------------------------- Our paper contributes to practice by showing how managers can orchestrate an ecosystem through consortia. The findings reveal the three options they have for using consortia for orchestrating, which were similar in transparency, consensus-based decision making and other aspects of governance but differed in their overall objectives and the scalability of their organizational processes. Finally, because several large competitors repeatedly cooperate with one another in various consortia, our results indicate that managers in the ecosystem must become adept at cooperating with competitors. ---------------------------- Author Perspective ---------------------------- When faced with an issue that requires multilateral collaborations, managers are challenged with how to achieve the necessary coordination and control. Ecosystem management research has focused on control through either a centralized ecosystem or a market-based approach. In an open innovation context, and where the issue is extremely complicated like in the case of Alzheimer’s Disease research, to make progress managers have developed a new practice, the use of indirect and distributed governance using R&D consortia. The consortia not only provide a novel approach towards orchestrating the ecosystem, but managers have engaged in and created different consortium types. Understanding distributed orchestration practices in the Alzheimer’s Disease context will apply to other biomedical as well as non-medical contexts.