The daily effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on every individual and organization are clearly foregrounding how wealth and health go hand in hand. The quest for health – the focus of the political agenda and objectives of every government – will influence every government’s process of reconstruction for months to come.
Scientific research is essential to generating health, in addition to having exceptional strategic value. Intuition and scientific soundness – in order to work – must necessarily be underpinned by adequate policies that work to define and reinforce the organization of innovation. Italy is the European leader in pharmaceuticals as regards both local firms and international investments. International competition is increasingly global, and consequently transformation processes are becoming faster and equilibria more unstable. These developments, to which progressive technological innovation contributes, are based more and more on collaboration and less on competition.
Big Pharma was already researching broader based models even before the pandemic, initially according to the Open Innovation paradigm and the logic of collaboration, to go on more recently to a model based on innovation and ecosystem networks. Covid-19 has provided further confirmation of the need to promote the high-speed circulation of knowledge and to assert a global research vision based on coordination mechanisms. In that sense, science and data and access to them become increasingly “open”; emblematic proof are experiments that have led to the record-time development of the vaccines slated to be distributed across the world in the coming months.
Thus, for its economic and social contribution, as well as for the diversity and inclusion it supports, research must be viewed as a public service. Despite that centrality, there is still pressure aimed at undermining research and calling into question its pivotal role. Some approaches choose to foreground the compelling and ever more relevant need to create a culture in which science is an integral and fundamental part of the society. While other views are scornful of attempts to strengthen public/private alliances, regarding them with suspicion and an anachronistic mind-set that emphasize potential conflicts of interests.
At the same time, research needs continual support that maintains and reinforces the conditions that make it possible to confront the risks of various nature and level that research inherently invites. Flexible timeframes and substantial investments, and the possibility of supporting high-risk research and related failure form the inescapable backbone of research that must not be neglected by decision-makers and financiers.
Finally, the threat remains of insufficient resources to confront the challenges created by research, global competition and the generation of innovation. In this case, in addition to implementing strategic plans that set national priorities, much-needed concrete action would consist of extending the training of new researchers to include those specific, emerging skills that the current system is unable to provide. At the same time, incentive for systems that ensure the correct and timely use of those skills need to be implemented