Millennium Pharmaceuticals

1.1 Overview
Founded in 1993 and headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., Millennium Pharmaceuticals is a leading biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery and development of small molecules, biotherapeutics, and predictive medicine products. The unmasking of the genome has provided enormous opportunities in drug discovery. Millennium is harnessing this knowledge by focusing on three strategies: major focus on personalized medicine and productivity, a growing and sustainable pipeline of breakthrough products, and a unique approach to creating value for shareholders through business leadership. Millennium focuses on four major therapeutic areas: oncology, metabolic diseases, cardiovascular conditions, and inflammation. Prior to its recent purchase of COR, revenue was primarily from R&D alliances with such pharmaceutical companies as Bayer and American Home Products. Increasingly, Millennium is looking to provide shareholder value throughproducts on the market (e.g., INTEGRILIN (eptifibatide) Injection peak sales are projected to exceed $500 million) and a deep, sustainable pipeline. The company hopes to shift medical care from addressing symptoms to tackling the root causes of disease. Millennium is also striving to leverage knowledge to create patient management services. The pharmaceutical industry faces tall productivity challenges such as reduced R&D productivity, reliance on blockbuster drugs, and increased therapeutic competition. In short, it is becoming more expensive to develop fewer products. Millennium, like most pharmaceuticals, is in a constant race with competition to be the first to market with new drug discoveries. For Millennium to take a drug from biology throughchemistry to development takes an average of 14 years and costs $880 million. Costs and competition will continue to increase as Millennium incorporates new technologies for discovery. Planning for an increased number of target markets, a higher percentage of unprecedented targets, and new technologies will require significant capital.

1.2 Knowledge Management and Innovation Practices

Millenniums approach and business model is firmly grounded in knowledge management and innovation. Leveraging strengths, the companys approach calls for an integrated and comprehensive industrialized platform with a focus on cost, quality, and cycle time. Figure 15 details Millenniums Gene to Patient (G2P) productivity platform.

Figure 15: The Millennium G2P Productivity Platform

The integrated G2P productivity platform is fundamental to Millenniums ability to revolutionize the drug discovery process. This process starts with a gene or target identification and integrates processes, tools, technologies, and people that enable the discovery and development process to become more efficient. This is achieved through large-scale knowledgemanagement efforts where information is continuously shared up and down the process through feedback loops. Millennium takes this information and focuses on the major bottlenecks in the process (e.g., target validation, preliminary clinical trials, and clinical development). Through this process, Millennium has been able to target areas that are responsible for almost 50 percent of drug development failures. Millennium notes that the advantages of an integrated platform are more than just a vision for the future, because productivity advancements are already a reality. For example, the Bayer molecule ICAST went from target identification to clinical candidate status in just 18 months, compared to the industry standard of 32 months. 1.2.1 The Role of Knowledge, Informatics, and Technology Millenniums goal with regard to knowledge and innovation is to build the best R&D information and knowledge platform in the industry, with a specific focus on knowledgemanagement, target validation, cheminformatics, and drug development.

The focus of target validation is to make information available to select the optimal set of targets from the genome for therapeutic intervention, define and establish the crossplatform extensions required to support personalized medicine, provide the foundation for Millenniums biology and disease knowledge bases, and enable the strategic experimentation required to determine the breadth and the outcome of the systems biology agenda. The focus on cheminformatics is to inform the selection of the optimal set of leads from compound libraries for therapeutic intervention; to provide a cross- platform view of drug discovery, preliminary clinical trials, and pharmaceutical sciences activities related to the screening and optimization of compounds; enable the strategic experimentation required to determine the breadth and delivery of computational chemistry and compound library strategies; and provide the foundation for disease and drug knowledge bases. Out of target validation, cheminformatics, and drug development, drug development is the most expensive. The focus is to make information available to select compounds as development candidates; to develop the evidence of product safety and efficacy to secure marketing authorization in key markets; to enable the processes and relationships required to develop drugs across key markets; and to provide the foundation for disease, drug, and customer knowledge bases. 1.2.2 Architecture Framework Millenniums G2P platform enables creating and sustaining the most critical knowledge bases, provides visibility to information across the enterprise and markets, drives value creation from underlying information assets, supports the flexibility required by the business model, and enables Millennium to extend itself into the health care marketplace to be a partner of choice. Millennium achieves this through an architecture framework made up of information architecture, collaboration architecture, and knowledge architecture. Information architecture is the formal structure of information and the technologies used to store and manipulate data. This includes Web services and database and document architecture. Web services include a next-generation approach to interoperability by allowing information and computation to be invoked as services by name and description. Database architecture includes a relational database management system for high data and transaction volumes. The document architecture includes specialized simple document types assembled into multiple, compound documents within a repository. Collaboration architecture is the set of tools and processes through which people interact with information and with each other. This includes portals; context- sensitive filtering; and people, processes, culture. Portals include a secure workspace for sharing work in progress, as well as a team-based view of internal and external information. Context-sensitive filtering is the automated classification of internal/ external information

and allows people to see what is available and relevant. People, process, and culture embed work flow and make knowledge capture a byproduct of work. People, process, and culture shape the values and incentives around sharing. Knowledge architecture is the structure and modeling of knowledge domains to build more powerful systems and includes ontologies such as structured findings and knowledgerepresentation systems or simulation. Ontologies are a consistent semantic framework that reflects the structure of a knowledge domain in terms of which information and knowledgemay be represented. Structured findings include capturing scientists or clinicians interpretations of data and representing findings in terms of a consistent framework. Knowledgerepresentation systems or simulations are intelligent systems for creating, searching, and computing across a knowledge base of structured findings.

1.3 Culture and Communicating The Guiding Principles, Objectives, and

Behaviors Innovation is the lifeblood of the pharmaceutical industry, and knowledge management and knowledge sharing help to drive innovation. The idea is to give researchers, scientists, and all personnel access to new data and be better able to see the link between targets and the market. 1.3.1 Knowledge Management The goal of knowledge management at Millennium is to enable the flow of information and knowledge across the companyaligning technologies, processes, and incentives to create an environment in which people have the information they need to make better, faster decisions. A key component of this goal is to understand and share what is known. For example, the KM organization is involved in projects that strive to achieve better quality information concerning targets by creating greater clinical relevance and higher success rates. It looks for opportunities to facilitate more efficient collaboration in alliances and between line functions with less downtime around key decisions and faster pipeline progression. It also looks for better integration of discovery, development, and commercial knowledge by better mapping its sciences to unmet medical needs. The bottom-line result is that information plus context equals actionable knowledge. 1.3.2 Knowledge Bases The focus on knowledge management is central to Millenniums strategy, and the purpose of the KM group is to build and maintain a knowledge management platform and to create a vision and plan for developing Millenniums most critical knowledge bases. Some of these knowledge bases include: biological pathways; biomarkers and their correlates; disease understanding and treatment; small molecules;

operations; and patients, providers, and payers. Millennium builds competencies at the interface between people and platform by defining views or lenses, improving the usability of systems, driving changes in work practices and behavior, and enabling the full lifecycle of Millennium-specific information content. Millennium defines a knowledge base as all related, accumulated knowledge and organizational experience, or the sum total of what is available to the organization for decision making. Millennium feels that its knowledge base currently exists in its people, systems, and processes. Millennium admits that, like all companies, its knowledge base has gaps, is fragmented in places, and could be more fully leveraged. From its existing knowledge, Millennium has built a unique way to make the different knowledge bases cross functional, and has come up with a guide and set of questions to help people narrow their search for information. For example, personnel in biology might consult the operations knowledge base to find out what therapeutic areas have previously worked on a particular gene target. Millenniums commercial organization may consult the biology knowledge base to find out if there are any recent articles written about the properties of a new drug. And personnel in the drug group might consult the disease knowledge base to find the trial results for drugs similar to one currently under optimization. By looking at how different groups will need to draw upon and contribute to each knowledge base, Millennium is building a blueprint for knowledge management development.
Figure 16 details five primary knowledge bases in the center ring (customer, biology, drug, disease, and operations), with the most highly correlated and corresponding business lines or functions situated in the outside ring. Millennium notes that each knowledge base has a natural constituency that is represented by the business functions most closely aligned to their respective knowledge bases. The thick, dividing lines indicate the information silos that naturally develop and hamper crossfunctional knowledge and information flows. Millennium believes that addressing strategically important cross-functional knowledge and information flows will enable more effective decision making and increased productivity.

Figure 16: Millenniums Knowledge Bases

1.3.3 Views To further help Millennium organize its knowledge and data, it has adopted the concept of views. A view is a construct that describes what users would like to see on their desktopsa gateway to what is available and relevant. When views are missing or incomplete, people are unaware of available resources and often reinvent the wheel or make decisions in absence of relevant and pertinent information. Millennium believes that the right views help to reduce the energy and time of contributing to (as well as accessing) the knowledgebases. According to Millennium, the composition of knowledge bases is determined incidentally as a consequence of multiple groups investing in technology, content, and processes. But Millennium attempts to clearly define what goes into knowledge bases and what lies behind the different views. What is the composition of Millenniums strategic knowledge bases? Aknowledge base is a construct that goes beyond database or document repository; rather, it brings expertise, relationships, decision making, and history into the picture as well.

Millennium is defining the cross-domain knowledge flows that will be critical to its business strategy for the work force to use. Groups access and contribute to knowledge bases in definable ways and, together, define the flow of information and knowledge across the company. Knowledge bases reflect the needs of the traditional constituency, but do not typically meet the needs of other groups. This is how and why silos are created. Millennium sees an opportunity to develop knowledge bases that support cross-functional access and contribution, particularly where knowledge flows are seen as strategic. Millennium has defined several organizational capabilities that its knowledge base strategy requires.


Access policies and proceduresHave well-defined policies and procedures for how people gain access to the information that they need across business functions, alliances, franchises, and with partners across the firewall. Common frames of referenceUse agreed standards for how Millennium names, references, and tags information so that systems are interoperable and individuals can find what they need across knowledge domains. Work practices and behaviorChange the way work gets done, including incentives for knowledge use, definition of roles and processes for content management, and improved user experience (e.g., usability, personalization, and training or support). Governance processesCoordinate and converge among technology and content groups around a shared vision of knowledge, information, and technology platform as reflected in planning, investment decisions, and entering into partnerships.

The KM group focuses its projects in ways that reflect its competency-building mission. For example, Compass has increased Millenniums capability in content management. Its information sharing solutions group increased Millenniums capability in defining and embedding scalable processes. And My Biology is a project aimed at increasing Millennium scientists ability to exploit all available information to build a picture of complex biological mechanisms and enable more efficient information sharing within alliances and key programs.

1.4 Fostering Collaboration

1.4.1 Compass Early in 2001 the KM group at Millennium initiated a project to generate a data storage catalog. The intent of the project was to provide an inventory of Millenniums information assets in order to facilitate productivity improvements by making it easier for employees to find, access, and use the information they needed throughout the company. The result of the project was a system named Compass, which is a Web-based application integrated into Millenniums corporate portal and intranet (MyMillennium) with a set of processes by which content in the catalog is developed and maintained.

The primary driver behind developing Compass was Millenniums need to know what information it has, where it is located, how it is accessed, and who is responsible for it. In terms of value, having a catalog of information resources readily available would reduce the time people spend looking for information and reduce the time people spend answering questions about resources they own or maintain. In addition, developing an inventory of key information resources was a prerequisite for enabling the broader knowledge and information-sharing goals embodied in the knowledge base strategy. In regard to content, Compass is a catalog of existing internal information. Each catalog entry describes an information resource in a format similar to a librarys card catalog with a title, summary, description, author (i.e., the person responsible for the information), the location of the resource, access instructions, keywords, categories, and related entries. Resources cataloged include presentations, reports, processes and procedures, internal and external Web sites, facilities, journals, and databases. Employees can search for information resources using the intranets built-in search mechanism. In addition, employees can browse the catalog through three views: departmental, alphabetical, and subject categories. Once an employee navigates to a catalog entry, access to the information resource itself is frequently just a click away. Additionally, the employee can readily contact the person responsible for the resource by clicking on the authors name that displays the authors telephone number, e-mail address, job title, and office location. Finally, the employee can find similar resources by clicking on a keyword or category, which displays a list of all catalog entries that contains the keyword or category. Compass catalog entries are written and maintained by entry authors situated throughout the organization. The system allows all employees to contribute, collaborate, and find information. Contributors can submit, edit, renew, and delete their own information by using a one-page form online. Each author submits and edits entries using an online form. Compass allows employees to contribute to the catalog easily. In order to provide consistency to the quality of catalog entries, Compass administrators review each submitted entry, editing it if necessary, before approving its publication. In addition, Compass administrators use alert and usage reporting capabilities built into the system to maintain the catalog and identify areas to improve both the breadth and depth of content in a way that is aligned with what people need to find. Millennium notes that it had many options for designing the technical components of the solution. The KM group decided to build Compass into the portal framework that the IT group was putting in place to replace Millenniums old intranet. The new portal was branded as MyMillennium. From a system design standpoint, the portal framework offered a platform that was simple, flexible, and relatively easy to customize. In addition, the IT groups portal project and the KM groups Compass project had similar goals to improve Millenniums ability to easily guide people to the information they need.

Millenniums content within Compass is organized into categories for context and browsing, and all items may be either searched or browsed. Analysis of searched and browsed content helps Millennium to continually focus Compass. By counting hits, looking for heavily searched content, and analyzing the gaps, Millennium is better able to make missing or desired resources available. Since its initial deployment, Compass continues to grow. In August 2002, 45 percent of Millenniums departments have Compass entries, one out of every six employees has contributed (17 percent of company) content, and there is evidence of solid and consistent growth in the number of entries and contributionsmore than 500 entries from May of 2001 to late 2002. Millennium has learned its share of lessons from its work with Compass and offers a few pros and cons. The pros are that Compass:
    

provides context for information through various views (department, projects, people, and expertise); provides hands-on training for users through content collection process; provides an easy way for content owners to keep content up-to-date by using an e-mail notification system; any type of document, system, or process can be indexed; and can be customized to directly address Millenniums requirements.

The cons are that:

    

the context is buried deep in the application, Compass does not represent a scalable way to train, Compass needs to allow content owners to define an appropriate content expiration date, the system is so abstract that many users dont understand its purpose or scope, and the custom application requires somewhat expensive maintenance.

Future plans include transitioning Compass into a commercial content management system in order to reduce the technical maintenance cost and better integrate Compass into the technical architecture. Phase one of this transitions plan is to address opportunities that the cons currently present while maintaining the features of the system that work well. Secondary plans are to work alongside IT to identify promising commercial systems and establish a timeline for the transition. 1.4.2 Compass and Usability In order to get feedback on the usability of Compass and to learn usability guidelines and testing techniques from industry-leading consulting groups, Millenniums KM group conducted a usability study with the help of an outside expert. The study findings highlighted challenges in three major areas.

1. Employees could not easily understand what Compass was if they did not already know about it. For example, people did not know what the Compass tab was for, even when they clicked it, and did not realize that Compass was an appropriate vehicle for contributing information, through My Millennium. 2. There were barriers to publishing information. Employees didnt want to try an unfamiliar tool without help from IT or a higher level of technical experience. It was found, however, that once the employees were walked through the system, they thought it was extremely valuable. 3. The final challenge was a design issue. The pages contained too many nonfunctional icons and logos, the branding was distracting, and each page was visually dominated by links. Based on the results of this study, a plan was put into place to revise the Compass design and functionality to better serve all user needs. Millenniums KM group added new headings and fuller explanatory text to help users better and more quickly understand Compasss functionality around searching and contributing content. It added a single link to FAQs that were currently cluttering up the screen. Extra logos were removed, and non-functional icons were turned into links or removed. Millennium also took a closer look at reviving old training programs and has planned for new training opportunities. Implementation of these changes only took two and a half working days. The design and review process took two full days of elapsed time and a half-day of production time. The result was a significant improvement with a cleaner, simpler look and feel. 1.4.3 Collaboration Support Another objective of the KM group has been to create collaboration spaces to promote information sharing and decision making within alliances and key programs. For example, the KM group helped establish eRoom: as a collaboration tool for Millenniums alliance with Abbott. In late 2001, the Abbott/Millennium alliance selected eRoom as their collaboration tool of choice by partly basing their decision on Millenniums experience with eRoom in the context of their alliance with Aventis. The KM group worked with alliance members to understand high-priority information-sharing needs of the alliance, identify explicit collaboration objectives, and gain an understanding of how the alliance operated to manage their project portfolio. A survey in early 2002 found that eRoom was solidly established as a collaboration tool for the Abbott/Millennium alliance and increased the efficiency of joint research committee members, provided a means for scientists to efficiently share information, and provided a filing cabinet to archive key project documents. In 2002 eRoom expanded to support internal teams. The KM group worked to develop methods for characterizing a groups collaboration needs by designing a suitable eRoom environment to meet their needs, planning the launch, and providing training. Very rapidly, eRoom was successfully deployed to key groups such as

senior management teams, strategic groups, and project teams throughout business operations, commercial, research, discovery, and development.

1.5 Establishing Support Roles and Structures

Millenniums KM group was formalized two years ago after an intensive three- month design phase to define the needs, required knowledge capabilities, and gaps. The KM group continually refines its strategy to identify where the largest opportunities are to use KM for change and productivity increases. Millennium has a matrix organizational structure, by function and key initiatives. The senior management team has responsibility for all strategic initiatives, one of which is productivity. The KM initiative reports into the productivity initiative via the chief knowledge officer. There are approximately eight to twelve people staffing the core KM team with six permanent employees. Millennium also uses contractors and consultants to support the KM initiative. 1.5.1 Views To further help Millennium organize its knowledge and data, it has adopted the concept of views. A view is a construct that describes what users see on their desktopsa gateway to what is available and relevant. When views are missing or incomplete, people are unaware of available resources, and often re-invent the wheel or make decisions in absence of relevant and pertinent information. Millennium believes that the right views help to reduce the energy and time of contributing to (as well as accessing) the knowledge bases. In most pharmaceutical companies, the composition of knowledge bases is determined incidentally as a consequence of multiple groups investing in technology, content, and processes. But, Millennium goes to great strides to clearly define what goes into knowledge bases and what lies behind the different views. What is the composition of Millenniums strategic knowledge bases? A knowledge base is a construct that goes beyond database or document repository; rather, it brings expertise, relationships, decision making, and history into the picture as well. Millennium is defining the cross-domain knowledge flows that will be critical to its business strategy. Groups access and contribute to knowledge bases in definable ways and, together, define the flow of information and knowledge across the company. Knowledge bases develop to reflect the needs of the traditional constituency, but dont typically meet the needs of other groups. This is how and why silos are created. Millennium sees an opportunity to develop knowledge bases that support cross- functional access and contribution, particularly where knowledge flows are seen as strategic. Millennium has defined the organizational and technical capabilities that its knowledge base strategy requires.

Access policies and proceduresWell-defined policies and procedures for how people gain access to the information that they need across business functions, alliances, franchises, and with partners across the firewall Common frames of referenceAgreed standards for how Millennium names, references, and tags information so that systems are interoperable and individuals can find what they need across knowledge domains Work practices and behaviorChanges in the way work gets done including incentives for knowledge re-use, definition of roles and processes for content management, and improved user experience (e.g. usability, personalization, and training/support) Governance processesCoordination and convergence among technology and content groups around a shared vision of knowledge, information, and technology platform as reflected in planning, investment decisions, and entering into partnerships

1.5.2 Information Sharing Solutions Group The goal of the information sharing solutions group is to deploy and support Millenniums collaboration tools and activities and communicate the plan and capability across the organization. One project undertaken by Millenniums KM and IT groups, driven by the success in establishing information-sharing tools, was an examination of how group-specific Web sites using Millenniums preferred portal technology and collaboration tools were being deployed and the subsequent derivation of a process that optimizes the deployment process. The goals of the project were to:
    

identify user needs and determine which available collaboration tools most appropriately satisfy those needs, determine the level of KM/IT consulting needed for the user to be successful and consistent with available resources, provide a reference library that supports the deployment process, develop a practitioner network comprised of experts who share best practices, and reduce the time needed to effectively deploy tools.

In moving forward with future deployments, the team wanted to retain the strengths of the existing process, diminish weaknesses, and build in information from customer needs assessments. A known strength is a hands-on approach. Currently, the individual who has initial contact with the user is involved with the deployment throughout the process. This will continue to happen as the information sharing solutions group moves forward. Weaknesses include not having time to debrief with the customer and customers not committed and not understanding of what it takes to deploy tools. Customer needs include quicker turn around time, step-by-step process descriptions, and a predictable time frame for deploying a solution, and a clear expectation of their role.

The information sharing solutions group engages in a number of other tasks. For example, it is charged with the training, development, and delivery for all collaboration technologies. The information sharing solutions group constructed the reference library that holds the detailed steps on how to operate and navigate the portal and eRooms, as well as providing links to collaboration resources. The group also holds monthly meetings with a representative from eRoom and a representative from the portal. This meeting exists to creatively share new ideas and offload some of the work from the KM and IT groups. The purpose is to provide an open and informal atmosphere. 1.5.3 Building a Knowledge Base The KM group focuses its projects in ways that reflect its competency-building mission. Specific projects/processes are created that enable Millennium scientists to exploit all available information in order to build a picture of complex biological mechanisms and enable more efficient information sharing within alliances and key programs. Each projects workflow for contributing content is well defined and includes three design components: content management, organizational change, and technology. Contentmanagement roles include executive sponsors, entry providers who describe the content and keep it up-to-date; experts who recommend new entries; and content coordinators who are accountable for the quality of entries and for stewarding the entire process. One such project is MyBiology, a database system that enables scientists to capture, share, and reuse scientific findings. Millennium seeks to lead the industry in its ability to leverage biological knowledge for drug discovery and development and exploit all available information to build a developing picture of complex biological systems. In doing this, Millennium faces challenges common to many pharmaceutical companies such as the explosion of external information, limited visibility to other scientists findings, and difficulty in pulling together information that is scattered across multiple sources. MyBiology is a term that refers to a family of projects that together help Millennium meet these challenges. MyBiology reflects Millenniums ambition to integrate at the knowledge level. The goals of MyBiology are to capture findings and interpretations, store them in a knowledge base, combine internal and external findings, embed the use of knowledge bases into scientific practice, and increase the scope of knowledge integration over time. The projects that make up MyBiology began with the scientific findings capture process. Examples of projects include MyTargetValidation life sciences. The technologies behind the scene that drive these products are Millennium databases, Dossier (a document repository), and Ingenuity (an external, third-party that provides both a highly structured biological ontology suitable for pharmaceutical use and a large source of scientific findings taken from the public literature).

1.5.4 Scientific Findings Capture Process The first phase of the scientific findings capture process is for a knowledge intermediary to attend a scientific presentation. Knowledge intermediaries attend about six to eight meetings per week. The second phase is to receive or retrieve the presentation from the presenting scientist. Millennium notes that there is solid support, and turnaround is typically one to three days for this phase. Phase 3 is to summarize the findings from the presentations into Dossier, a document management system based upon Documentum. The average time to complete this task is two hours, and 205 total findings have resulted thus far. The fourth phase in the scientific findings capture process is to contact the presenting scientist for approval. This is where Millennium has identified a potential bottleneck because it takes an average of six days for scientists to respond (range of one day to 43 days). After the presenting scientist agrees that the summary of their work is accurate and complete, it is made available online. The process is complete when the final encoded presentation is available in Dossier. To help foster the process, the scientific findings capture process employs intermediaries to reduce the burden of knowledge sharing for bench scientists. Knowledge intermediaries have integrated into the R&D organization and regularly attend lab meetings in oncology, proteomics, and target advancement (pilot). There are three full-time knowledgeintermediaries. The ratio to bench scientists number 200 to 1. They serve as a resource for scientists and direct them to sources of information as well as provide assistance with Web sites, IT solutions, and biology resources. Knowledge intermediaries gather and summarize scientific findings by collecting PowerPoint presentations, Excel spreadsheets, and other electronic files with associated explanatory information about the experiment and its conclusion. Knowledge intermediaries also create summary information, confirm information accuracy, and publish information to the document repository, Dossier (Figure 17).

Figure 17: Scientific Findings Capture Process

1.5.5 MyTargetValidation A major new project in heavy use at Millennium is the MyTargetValidation knowledge base, which serves as a portal to 20 different scientific data repositories. The knowledge base serves as a central source for information about pharmaceutical targets in the genome. Unlike Dossier, which is dependent on the knowledge intermediaries to curate the information it contains by hand, the knowledge base relies on the groups that maintain the data stores that send

information to the knowledge base to define what should appear on the MyTargetValidation page. This allows MyTargetValidation to remain very lightweight technologically and provide broad access to valuable scientific information sources to Millennium scientists. 1.5.6 Ingenuity Ingenuity Systems Inc. partnered with Millennium in April of 2002 and brings expertise in knowledge representation systems including knowledge bases, knowledge acquisition tools, query language, and their own life sciences application. Ingenuity provides access to both their technology and their content acquisition system, which involves both manual and automated reviews of public literature papers and entry of the findings into a database. There were other products available to choose from, but ultimately, Millennium chose Ingenuity based on its core technology, best in industry knowledge, and the quantity of its literature-based findings. Its public literature content contains 600,000 findings, including manual abstraction of 32 journals and more than 24,000 recent articles. The proprietary findings from the Dossier knowledge repository coupled with information and structured content from Ingenuity have allowed Millennium some unique collaboration opportunities. Millennium has combined these two databases to form one huge, single knowledge base. This is beneficial because it allows Millennium to perform computational analysis of integrated complex biological knowledge for drug discovery. More importantly, it presents Millennium scientists with integrated views of information derived from disparate sources.

1.6 Examining Indicators Of Success and Change

Millennium has many measures of innovation including the strength and sustainability of the pipeline, the extent of commercialization of targets, and revenue growth. Millennium also relies heavily on productivity modeling to evaluate pipeline measures such as probabilities of success, resources required, and the time to the next stage. Millennium macro measures include analyzing stages, success rate by stage, and stage drop out rate. The KM group measures the acceptance and use of systems they help deploy. In Compass, measures include analysis of usage statistics, quality and growth of content, and the extent to which searches are successful. For the information sharing solutions group, measures include the efficiency of the revised deployment process, the flexibility and robustness of the process over time, and user participation in the practitioner network and reference library. Surveys are also used to evaluate the effectiveness of deployed solutions and to identify opportunities for improvement. Many measures are used in the MyBiology effort including usage statistics characterizing how scientists use MyTargetValidation and metrics for the effort required to capture, approve, and publish scientific findings.

1.7 Lessons Learned

A primary lesson is that addressing organizational issues is more importantand more challengingthan putting technical solutions in place. Early on in a project, employees ensure they understand the problem they aim to solve and then get buy-in from the right people to ensure sponsorship, commitment, and involvement. Millennium advises when designing solutions, be cautious about over-engineering. Stay aware of the readiness of a group to receive a new solution (usually entailing a change in work practice and more work) and employ a staged deployment approach that addresses end users fundamental needs first. Also define a value proposition and measurement strategy early. By defining a measurement strategy and building it into project plans, project members are well positioned to analyze usage statistics, conduct post-launch surveys, and host end-user feedback sessions. These activities provide tremendous help in embedding new solutions. 1.7.1 Next Steps At a strategic level, the KM group is working on socializing the knowledge base strategy within Millennium, with a focus on the required organizational capabilities. With Compass, they plan to provide specialized views of content (e.g., G2P platform applications) to particular user groups and help the IT group transition the content management capabilities to a commercial system. Deployments of portal communities and eRooms are the ongoing responsibility of the information sharing solutions group, and this practice is well embedded in the IT organization. Thus far in MyBiology, the knowledge intermediaries are employed in multiple therapeutic areas, and according to Millennium, have been well received overall. Millennium will continue to extend this philosophy to other parts of the organization. Dossier entries are visible to other scientists through MyTargetValidation, which is being used by more than 100 research scientists on a regular basis. Additional metrics are currently under development.