Models for open innovation in the pharmaceutical industry

•Pharmaceutical companies have realized the potential of open innovation.•The industry R&D standard comprises 50% externally generated R&D portfolio and predominantly introverted innovation management.•Four new open innovators have been identified: Knowledge creator, knowledge integrator, knowledge translator and knowledge leverager.•Pharmaceutical companies can easily adopt from Shire's R&D model its strong openness towards external innovation. The nature of the pharmaceutical industry is such that the main driver for its growth is innovation. In view of the vast challenges that the industry has been facing for several years and, in particular, how to manage stagnating research and development (R&D) productivity, pharmaceutical companies have opened their R&D organizations to external innovation. Here, we identify and characterize four new types of open innovator, which we call ‘knowledge creator’, ‘knowledge integrator’, ‘knowledge translator’ and ‘knowledge leverager’, and which describe current open R&D models.