Virtual Communities as an Organizational Mechanism for Embedding Knowledge in Drug Discovery: The Case of Chemical Biology Platform

In this paper, we document the lessons from the development of chemical biology platform in a major pharmaceutical company, and the outcomes of the early phases of this experiment. Altough the concept of chemical biology is not new, its evolution and deployment in the drug development process is relatively new. The present experiment thus has to deal with both the scientific novelty of chemical biology, and organizational challenge of embedding it in the ongoing process of drug development. The notion of virtual communities or platforms overlaid on the traditional matrix of drug development served to introduce the approach, with some remarkable outcomes.