Driving health transformation: big pharma’s innovation labs revolution | Health Research Policy and Systems

This study offers a structured characterisation of innovation labs promoted by major pharmaceutical companies, combining a scoping review with an original mapping of 102 centres across 14 firms and three analytical levels (company, initiative, centre). To our knowledge, it is the first comparative account that distinguishes systematically between unicentric and multicentric configurations and links structure to activities, stakeholders and outputs. The paucity of indexed work on industry-led labs – evident in our need to triangulate grey literature – underscores both the novelty and the system-level relevance of these findings.

A central finding is the predominance of digital transformation across pharma-led labs, with digital development, digital health solutions and digital monitoring emerging as common pillars. Centres with a digital focus tend to be more recently established, indicating a sectoral pivot towards data-driven R&D, connected care and AI-enabled capabilities; while this pattern reflects a temporal trend rather than a definitive effect size, it aligns with the reconfiguration of innovation portfolios observed in the industry.

In this study, big pharma innovation labs exhibit diverse collaboration activities and stakeholders, reflecting that open innovation and cross-sector collaboration are strategic priorities. This diversity highlights their role as key mechanisms to enhance R&D pipelines, foster partnerships and support pharmaceutical companies in addressing industry challenges with advanced digital capabilities.

This study’s notable contribution is distinguishing between unicentric and multicentric innovation lab models. Our comparative analysis revealed statistically significant differences across several thematic areas, suggesting that structural configuration plays a relevant role in shaping these centres’ innovation approach and performance.

Multicentric centres strongly orient towards external engagement, particularly in collaboration, entrepreneurship support and innovation promotion. These centres were more likely to offer structured mechanisms for mentoring, co-development, market knowledge sharing and open innovation platforms. They also showed greater output in patent generation and spin-off creation, aligning with the broader shift towards open innovation models. Conversely, unicentric centres are more focused environments for experimentation, organizational transformation and early-stage clinical research. Their contained structures allow for deeper integration with corporate culture, rapid iteration cycles and targeted strategic development. Rather than being less developed, unicentric labs fulfil critical functions in nurturing innovation capabilities and fostering internal learning.

Pharmaceutical companies are increasing their R&D investments and reconfiguring how innovation is structured, shifting from closed, internal pipelines to more open, collaborative and decentralized models [5, 45]. Our findings point to the coexistence of two distinct yet complementary innovation strategies within big pharma: one centred on external collaboration and scalability and another more oriented towards internal and organizational development. Recognizing the strategic value of each model may help pharmaceutical companies design more balanced and effective innovation portfolios.

However, despite their promise, innovation labs face substantial challenges. Pharmaceutical R&D continues to experience declining productivity, with the average cost of bringing a new drug to market now exceeding $3.5 billion [46]. Innovation labs, therefore, serve not only as platforms for creative exploration but also as strategic responses to inefficiencies in traditional R&D models [8].

By promoting cross-disciplinary collaboration and breaking down traditional silos, these spaces facilitate the emergence of novel solutions to complex challenges [9, 47]. Prior studies highlight how the combination of structured methodologies with flexibility enhances the innovation potential of diverse teams, enabling organizations to respond more effectively to emerging needs and opportunities [6, 48, 49]. Furthermore, organizations that leverage innovation labs gain a strategic advantage, allowing them to remain competitive and responsive to emerging challenges and opportunities [50]. These insights align with our findings, particularly in multicentric centres, where cross-functional collaboration and knowledge-sharing mechanisms were more consistently reported [15, 51, 52].

Despite their growing impact, industry-promoted health innovation labs encounter significant challenges, particularly in the ideation and development of novel healthcare solutions [15, 53, 54]. These labs often struggle to position themselves effectively within venture capital ecosystems and open innovation platforms, essential for advancing innovative healthcare products towards regulatory approval [5]. Moreover, the complex interplay between marketing strategies and ethical considerations underscores the need for robust governance frameworks that navigate technical, regulatory and ethical landscapes simultaneously [55].

To enhance the impact of innovation labs in the healthcare sector, it is crucial to foster environments that promote strategic collaboration and knowledge sharing among various stakeholders [56,57,58]. Establishing healthcare hubs can be instrumental in this regard, as they facilitate connections and collaborations among clinicians, researchers, entrepreneurs and industry leaders to address unmet healthcare needs [19, 59, 61]. Beyond their role as platforms for generating new solutions, innovation labs are key mechanisms for knowledge absorption within large pharmaceutical companies. By facilitating structured interactions with external partners and integrating emerging scientific approaches, they enhance the organization’s absorptive capacity – enabling the assimilation, transformation and application of novel knowledge to internal R&D pipelines [62].

From a portfolio management perspective, these insights suggest that pharmaceutical companies have considered a diversified innovation strategy that combines both models. Multicentric hubs can maximize visibility, reach and external input, while unicentric centres can concentrate on depth, continuity and organizational learning. Additionally, investing in clear interfaces and synergies between both types of labs – such as shared knowledge platforms, cross-lab mentoring schemes or aligned governance structures – may enhance overall effectiveness [55].

The findings reveal that patient involvement remains marginal across the observed centres, despite growing attention to user-centred design. Increasing participation from end-users could help ensure that innovation efforts are aligned with real-world needs and expectations, enhancing both impact and adoption [63].

This study has several limitations that should be acknowledged. First, the analysis is based on publicly available information, which may not fully reflect the innovation labs’ internal operations, informal collaborations or unpublished outcomes. As such, some activities may be underreported, particularly those still in early or confidential phases. Second, the study does not include corporate venture capital initiatives promoted by pharmaceutical companies. These investment arms – often operating in parallel with innovation labs – play a significant role in shaping the startup landscape, driving external innovation and expanding the reach of big pharma into adjacent markets. Their exclusion limits the scope of this analysis to structural innovation labs, potentially overlooking important dynamics in the broader innovation ecosystem.

Importantly, reliance on grey literature is both a limitation and a contribution of this study. While it reflects the scarcity of indexed academic sources on industry-led innovation labs, it also enabled us to build an original and systematic dataset that would otherwise remain undocumented. In this sense, grey literature both highlights the academic gap and provides a unique evidence base for policy and systems analysis.

In addition, the cross-sectional nature of the data provides a snapshot rather than a longitudinal view of how innovation labs evolve, merge or dissolve over time. Future research could build on this foundation by incorporating impact evaluations, stakeholder perceptions or longitudinal case studies to assess the sustainability and effectiveness of different lab models. Further work could also explore how innovation labs interact with corporate venture capital initiatives, academic networks and regulatory environments to form integrated innovation strategies in the pharmaceutical sector.

Pharmaceutical innovation labs have emerged as vital mechanisms for accelerating healthcare transformation, blending scientific, technological and entrepreneurial approaches. Recognizing the distinct contributions of unicentric and multicentric models – and fostering strategic alignment between them – will be critical for companies seeking to sustain innovation leadership.

Future research could build on this foundation by incorporating impact evaluations, stakeholder perspectives and longitudinal analyses to assess the sustainability of different lab models over time. Additionally, exploring the interaction between innovation labs, corporate venture capital initiatives, academic ecosystems and regulatory environments could provide a more integrated understanding of pharmaceutical innovation strategies.

From the perspective of dynamic capabilities [64], pharma innovation labs can be interpreted as organizational vehicles for sensing, seizing and transforming. By scouting emerging technologies, startups and digital solutions, they enable sensing of external opportunities; through partnerships, co-creation processes and joint initiatives, they support seizing of collaborative knowledge; and by embedding digital tools, piloting new care models or scaling innovative processes, they contribute to transforming internal corporate capabilities. This framing reinforces their role not only as spaces for experimentation, but also as infrastructures for knowledge transfer and capability building within health innovation ecosystems.

On the basis of the outputs identified in our analysis, several concrete recommendations emerge. First, patient and professional engagement should be strengthened, as it remains uneven across labs, yet represents a critical mechanism for both innovation relevance and adoption. Second, while digital innovation is widespread, a stronger focus on tangible outcomes – including validated services, clinical trial tools and health quality-of-life improvements – would enhance the measurable impact of labs. Third, a more systematic approach to evaluating outputs and disseminating learnings across networks would help overcome the current fragmentation and reinforce the transformative role of pharma innovation labs. Together, these strategies would enable industry-led labs to realize their full potential as dynamic, adaptive infrastructures driving collaborative health innovation.

Our findings underline that pharma-led innovation labs function as systemic actors with direct implications for health policy and governance. They consistently collaborate with universities, industry partners, governments and healthcare professionals, positioning these infrastructures as boundary-spanning interfaces where corporate R&D agendas intersect with public health priorities. Their emphasis on entrepreneurship and education shows that they not only generate patents and spin-offs but also contribute to capacity building across health systems. At the same time, the limited involvement of patients highlights an area where closer alignment with policy objectives – particularly participatory and user-centred innovation – remains critical. Strengthening these connections could accelerate regulatory adaptation, support digital health integration into care pathways and inform national and regional policies aimed at building more resilient, efficient and patient-centred health systems.