Bénédicte Callan
Sid Richardson Fellow for Innovation and Health Policy and Research Affiliate of the Center for Health and Social Policy
Profile
“TIP provides an international group of colleagues and access to a number of different research fields. The variety among the group working together provides different perspectives on problem solving.”
Benedicte is an accomplished academic with degrees in political science, East Asian studies and biology. She is also well-versed in the nitty-gritty of policy-making after spending 12 years helping the OECD manage emerging fields in scientific and industrial innovation. Benedicte’s experience at building institutional consensus is a valuable complement to her expertise in science, economics and technology sharing.
What is the biggest challenge facing innovation and IP at the moment?
“I would say the issue of data and databases. In the life sciences, there’s been an explosion of data but we now have a problem of how to create structures that allow multiple researchers to access and search this data.”
What is one of the most influential books or articles you have read about innovation?
“I would recommend ‘A Call for Sharing: adapting pharmaceutical research to new realities’ by Munos and Chin in Science.”
Where do you see the future of innovation?
“One of the areas I see the most innovation is in regard to diseases in the developing world. There has been a lot of innovation in this area. Overall, I think for innovation to take place, there has to be open lines of communication.”
What is an important lessons from your research?
“Methods of sharing technology. For instance, at the OECD, the perceived problem of patent clusters was addressed not by repealing patents but by finding new organizational mechanisms to access and share technology.”