New Instruments for Transformative Innovation & Their Functions: Product Development Partnerships for Neglected Diseases

With the growing attention to solve complex problems, a series of new forms of governance at national and international level have developed since the early 2000s. They are new because they address
strategic long-term problems in a holistic manner, they set substantive output-oriented goals, and they are implemented through new organizational structures. Overall these new instruments seek to coordinate diverse actors through a series of ideational and organizational elements. In asking how these new instruments emerge and evolve, this paper takes a functionalist approach identifying
empirically the different functions they fulfill and looking at how they mobilize the available resources to fulfill them (funding, organizational, knowledge and legitimacy resources). This approach is used in the study of product development partnerships for neglected diseases, a new type of transformative instrument that brings together different partners in order to develop affordable, effective and accessible medicines for the global poor. The paper examines in detail 4 emblematic cases of single- and multi-disease PDPs (DNDi, EVI, IAVI and MVI). The findings show that their functions have been evolving through time, as the PDPs are becoming more specialized and focused. However, their ability to mobilize the resources depends largely on their capability as agents to adapt to rapidly changing opportunity structures (scientific opportunities as well as institutional opportunities).