Selvita is a drug discovery company and one of the leading biotech companies in Poland. It was founded in 2007 by two entrepreneurs coming from the IT industry. This case is not about a particular OI experiment, but rather it is about the OI system that was established in the company and how a pipeline of projects and a system to finance them was developed. The company in effect took on an intermediary role between public research and the established pharma companies. The concept explicitly relies on partnerships – it has OI in its design. The case reveals how their business model evolved by relying on partnerships of different kinds and by being flexible and creative. They developed a hybrid business model, which combines an internal pipeline and drug discovery services, to finance their long-term projects.
Open innovation for SME's
