Wake Forest Innovations stresses 'open' for business: building mutually beneficial relationships with industry.

• Position: RESEARCH NORTH CAROLINA: WAKE FOREST INNOVATIONS

At Wake Forest, open innovation isn't a concept or model. It is the way business is done.

"We believe that broad-based collaborative relationships are the most efficient and productive means of bringing therapeutics, medical devices, diagnostics and digital health concepts from the minds of our faculty to the marketplace," said Eric Tomlinson, D.Sc., Ph.D., who heads Wake Forest Innovations. "We are committed to establishing partnerships with industry that are based on sharing expertise, knowledge, risk and reward at all stages of development."

As the commercialization arm of Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, a nationally recognized academic medical center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Wake Forest Innovations offers direct access to more than 1,100 clinicians and researchers--including leading experts in regenerative medicine, cancer, aging, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, substance abuse and public health sciences--plus advanced technologies and world-class facilities. It augments those assets with business acumen, an entrepreneurial spirit and an industry-supportive approach.

"Wake Forest Innovations is the business entity for an academic institution," Tomlinson said. "Our staff has deep and rich business experience, and our structure is such that an industry partner will find working with us as seamless as working with an internal research & development group."

In its open innovation engagement model, Wake Forest Innovations puts industry and academia together so they can understand and appreciate each other's needs and capabilities then determine common goals, devise practical strategies and coordinate their...