Before jumping in, we ran a 6-week Discovery to understand how scientists are doing this today and where the biggest opportunities for data-driven innovation and transformation existed within the R&D organization. We interviewed over 50 key R&D functional leaders and research scientists to understand questions like:
What are the biggest hurdles in finding and using data in easy and meaningful ways to explore a scientific question?
What are the challenges with the data itself? What do you need to make it most usable for analysis and decision-making?
How do we leverage our existing data better? What would it take to break down existing data silos and enable broad, trusted use of our data assets?
What types of data relationships would be most valuable, and how would you want to consume the data?
What is the low-hanging fruit for impacting R&D productivity NOW through democratized data and knowledge?
Who would benefit most, and how would we measure the success in terms of efficiency and effectiveness?
How would the organization need to shift and change to embrace a new way of doing research driven by data and knowledge?
What would we need to show leadership to drive alignment and gain buy-in for future growth and sustained investment in this initiative?
The interviews surfaced incredible insights and complex tensions for the team to address as we considered the path forward. To create a platform of this scale and potential impact would require significant thought and building trust with scientists from the beginning.
The big question: Where do we start?