Spotlight on Spike Awards Life Sciences Winner: Eli Lilly

by Jenna Dudevoir on October 25th, 2010

As you know, last week we announced the first annual Spike Awards winners. Eli Lilly took home the Spike trophy in the Life Sciences category. Let's take a look at why they won.

Business Challenge

Eli Lilly is a $21.8 billion pharmaceutical company and needed an efficient and cost-effective method for global R&D research scientists involved in the new drug development process to exchange ideas and feedback with one another.

Project Details

The company implemented an internal social networking solution through solution provider AskMe. AskMe’s software solution enables companies to create internal knowledge networks.

 

Results / Improvements

This solution allowed Eli Lilly’s research scientists to connect directly with subject matter experts to provide feedback throughout the new drug development process. As a result they have improved global collaboration, increased knowledge sharing amongst multiple divisions, and generated significant R&D cost-savings by reducing re-work and redundancy.

Why They Won

The use of social media and social technologies is an emerging area in life sciences and pharma given the highly regulated environment. FDA/DDMAC regulations on rules and expectations about social media communication are still evolving and not 100% clear. But social media doesn't just equal Facebook or the other public networks you first think about when you hear the term "social media." Enterprise 2.0 is a way for organizations to securely use social technologies internally within an organization. Eli Lilly’s social product innovation story falls in the Enterprise 2.0 category and demonstrates how organizations can use these technologies within communities of practice (R&D research scientists) for collective problem solving, collaboration, and knowledge sharing and management.

Congratulations to Eli Lilly for using Enterprise 2.0 to improve their product development processes!

Topics: Blog, E 2.0, Eli Lilly, Enterprise 2.0, Life Sciences, Pharma, Pharmaceutical, R&D, Research Development, Social Computing, Social Media, Social Networking, Social Product Development, Social Product Innovation, Spike, Spike Awards