cureaccelerator final deliverable

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Helping CureAccelerator increase awareness and commitment on

repurposing

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Contents

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Contents1. Introduction…............................................................... 42. Project goals ................................................................ 73. Solution approach ....................................................... 94. Part 1: Boosting the platform..................................... 115. Part 2: Social Media and online marketing strategy... 416. Part 3: Leveraging the existing network..................... 657. Final recommendations ........................................... 1038. Attachment 1: Survey results...................................

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Introduction

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IntroductionThe CureAccelerator program was created by Cures Within Reach (CWR) to encourage repurposing research among the scientific community. The program’s objective is to leverage the capabilities and power of existing treatments and drugs, that have been originally designed to treat a different disease. The platform was launched in June 2015 and since then has successfully attracted 750 active members, including researchers, clinicians and funders. The aim of the Organization is to reach 2,000 active members by the end of 2016, as well as to raise awareness about the platform and its benefits; increase its usability, and ultimately build a strong community where research and funds are paired to find cures for more than 7,000 diseases.

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Introduction

Due to time, resources and funding constraints, the organization has not been systematic in its efforts regarding outreach and communication. This has made it difficult for CWR to raise awareness about the platform and the importance of repurposing, especially because repurposing is not a traditional “keyword” by which research is defined.

Although there are a considerable number of users in the platform, the organization’s members don’t necessarily see themselves as a community, and the activities on the platform are not enough to generate a sustainable and strong bond between users.

There have not been enough activities or events to introduce and promote the brand and create adequate awareness to potential subscribers, including clinicians, researchers, and funders.

Lack of social media influence: 110 followers on LinkedIn and 446 on Twitter. (The organization is currently creating the Facebook public page).Lastly, the design of the web site is not as user-friendly as it could be, and does not necessarily make it easy for people to find the information they want in a speedy way.

Current challenges CureAccelerator faces:

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Project Goals

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Project GoalsThe project is designed to help the organization build brand awareness for the CureAccelerator platform, allowing CWR to generate high lead volume for the repurposing program, and to increase community engagement and number of members.

General Goal

Specific Goals:

Bring more funders, researchers and clinicians to the platform.

Create attention to the program on social media (Increase followers on relevant social media platforms).

Create connections between users and make them more active in the platform.

Provide suggestions as to how to make the platform more accessible and user -friendly.

Give further recommendations on the future development of the platform .

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Solution Approach

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Solution ApproachThe way the content is presented to current and potential members, as well as to how user-friendly, attractive and engaging it is for all three types of users.

Social Media & Online Marketing

Networks

How the existing network can be used and taken advantage of to increase the number of users in the platform, as well as to bring more awareness about the program to the community and potential members.

The efforts needed to create content in social media that attracts members to read and share what CureAccelerator has to say.

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Part 1: Boosting the Platform

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The researchThe team designed four different surveys, aimed to identify how all the different users perceive the platform, whether they though it add value to them and based on this, possible opportunities for improvement.

Surveys sent: 446Surveys answered: 30Response rate: 6%

Group 1: Researchers


Group 2: Clinicians


Group 3: Funders


Group 4: General user

Although the response rate was lower than expected, there are valuable responses worth analyzing and take into account to produce recommendations for the site and the way Cures Within Reach engages with the users.

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The researchAfter analyzing the results, we found that they can be classified into 6 different categories:

1. The Platform Refers to the functional and visual elements of the platform, including whether people find it attractive, user-friendly, functional and useful.

2. Feedback

3. Usage

4. Funding

5. Promotion

6. Outreach

Refers to the extent to which users feel the CureAccelerator program or Cures within reach provide them with enough feedback regarding their submissions or requests.

Refers to how much the users use the different functionalities of the platform and to the level of awareness they have about them.

Refers to the expectations of users regarding the information the platform provides on funding.

Refers to how people get to know about the platform, how they found out about it and how they keep up to date with what is going on in it.

Refers to the extent to which users perceive the CureAccelerator community to be connected to stakeholders outside of the network.

Recommendations for funding and outreach can be found on the “Network Strategy” section of this document; and for promotion on the Social Media and Online Marketing section .

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Platform- resultsTaking into account that the platform is not even a year old, we defined that a positive score of 60% or more was acceptable at this stage of maturity. The results below show the elements that users consider to be working fine and those they consider could be improved*:

Visual Design 72% User Friendliness 68% Functionality 60%

Collaboration 40% Usefulness 48% Information search 56%

The look and feel of the platform is adequate and people like it.

*based on results for the user group “researchers”

People consider the platform is easy to use and has no complicated features that prevent them from accessing or using it

Users like the functionalities of the platform so far, but would like to have more options to collaborate, find what they need and connect to others.

Users manifest there is not enough opportunity for members of the community to collaborate between them. Discussion rooms are seldom used and there are no other mechanisms to connect.

Users don’t see all the benefits of the platform either because the information that is posted has little to do with their interests, or because they cannot find what they are looking for.

Information is not always easy to find, there are no mechanisms for advance searching that help individuals refine their search and target more specific information.

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Platform - Recommendations1. Increase collaboration amongst users within the platform

Users manifest there is not enough opportunity for members of the community to collaborate between them. Discussion boards are seldom used and there are no other mechanisms users can utilize to connect.

Source: Wikipedia

There are two basic types of virtual collaboration:*

Asynchronous SynchronousTeam members are able to share information and ideas instantaneously*.

Team members communicate without the ability to instantly respond to messages or ideas.

Discussion boards in CureAccelerator.

Although CureAccelerator offers users the opportunity to collaborate, it does so in an Asynchronous way, so users cannot really interact with each other as they wish they could.

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Chat Rooms

Collaboration Groups

Chat rooms are online spaces where users communicate with one another through text based messages*. Creating chat rooms will allow users to interact in real time, engaging in conversations with one or more members of the community to solve questions and inquiries. They are also great to connect people who do not know each other but can benefit from other’s knowledge and expertise.

Source: How stuff works

Collaboration groups allow people with similar interests and ideas to share a virtual space with other like minded people. In the CureAccelerator context, this means creating different groups by discipline and project, so that all people involved in a specific research can drop and drag information, post ideas, documents, papers, etc. It would also be useful when people are co-investigating with others or for people to to ask for help from other fellow clinicians / researchers.

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Forums

Forums are similar to discussions, but they are managed differently. While a discussion is open whenever necessary, forums require more planning. We suggest CureAccelerator follow this steps:• Identify the topics that matter to users most. Some suggestions we received in the survey

were: Legal issues of repurposing, specific therapeutic areas, benefits and advantages of repurposing, etc. • Define list of topics and dates for at least six months. • Designate a moderator for each forum, and someone responsible for taking notes and

writing the minutes. • Send an email to all users with the topics and the schedule, as well as reminders of each

forum a week ahead and the day before. Include instructions on how to connect, what can they do within the forum and who will moderate it. • Send all participating users the minutes and publish a summary of the conclusions in the

website.

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Webinars

• An online seminar or webinar is a seminar held live on the web. The presenter will use a PowerPoint deck and speak over the airways, and the audience can interact via voice or through a live chat facility.

• We recommend webinars for CureAccelerator because they not only bring the community together around a common subject, but also because they are a fantastic way of spreading knowledge around the community. Panelists can be either registered users of the platform or external parties invited to speak about a certain topic.

• The steps for organizing a webinar are similar to the steps for organizing forums. In this particular case however, we would suggest to open the webinar so that people outside the platform can access it. This will give the platform more visibility and has the potential to attract potential users.

Source: Internet Expressions

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Users manifest there is not enough opportunity for members of the community to collaborate between them. Discussion rooms are seldom used and there are no other mechanisms to connect.

Chat rooms Collaboration groups Forums Webinars

Frequency Permanent Permanent Once a month Four times a year

Scope All registered users All registered users All registered users

All registered users and external parties

Moderator N/A N/A Someone from CWR

Someone from CWR or outside expert

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Platform - Recommendations2. Increase information visibility

Users don’t see all the benefits of the platform either because the information that is posted has little to do with their interests, or because they cant find what they are looking for.

To do this, we suggest the following

1. Organize information on RFP’s, projects, discussions, and public titles by commonalities, such as disease, type of drug, specialty, field, status, funding number, etc.

2. Create a section of “success cases,” where some of the funded research is shown and tips on how to find a funding match.

3. Use word clouding in each category of information, to help people identify the most common disciplines, fields of study, illnesses, etc., in the platform.

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Platform - Recommendations3. Information Search

Information is not always easy to find, there are not enough mechanisms for advance searching that help individuals refine their search and target more specific data.

Search features are not uniform throughout the platform, making it hard for users to find what they want without spending too much time or giving up. To improve user experience,, we suggest making the search function more robust by adding:

Search by Keywords: When typing a word on the “name” field, the list of results is not clear as to where in the list or in the document does the requested word appear. We suggest also to highlight the requested word once the list of results appears on the screen.

Making Tags a common feature: Currently, only RPS’ and Projects have tags. We propose expanding those tags also to the discussion board.

Allow sorting: The search option does not give the user the option to filter results by date, relevance, or alphabetically. This means people have to go through all the results to find what they need.

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Feedback - Results and recommendationsFeedback refers to the extent to which users feel the CureAccelerator program or Cures Within Reach provide them with enough feedback regarding their submissions or requests. When users do not receive timely feedback or not feedback at all, their engagement with the process, the platform, and the organization in general drops.

Users would like more feedback from the organization regarding the submissions, timeframes and results of the evaluation process CWR performs before publishing projects.

Opportunity for improvement

Get them further involvedAllow people to blog and share their experiences and knowledge within the platform. Pick people to blog once a month and provide links to such blogs in the newsletter.

Enhance your “customer experience”Once a user submits the required documents, send him an email explaining what is next in the process, how long will it take, who the person to contact is in case of doubts or to provide updates. Publish a diagram of the process a project goes through from the moment it is submitted until it is approved, including estimated times.

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Be a partnerWhile its clear that the role CWR has in the process is to curate the projects submitted by researchers and clinicians, it is important that it positions itself as a partner in the process, rather than just an auditor or a curator. Users need to feel there is a partnership between them and the Organization.

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3

Solutions

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Usage - Results and recommendationsUsage refers to how much the users know about the different features the platform has, and the opportunities they provide, as well as the level of use of such features. No platform is completely successful unless its users know they can execute certain activities within it, either to make it more useful to them or to access information or other users faster / better.

Create an instructional video on how to use the platform, showing all the features it has and what the advantages of using them are for the members.

To increase the usage of the platform and make sure it is utilized in its full potential, we suggest the following:

Include a “tips and tricks” section in the newsletter, providing instructions on how to use certain features in a simple and straightforward way.

Include a “Did you know” section in the newsletter, giving people information an what the benefits are to become a certified clinician/researcher and how to do it in the platform. The objective is to increase the number of certified members within the platform.

Once other features such as collaboration groups, webinars, chatrooms and forums are introduced in the platform, include instructions and videos about these features. Create a resource repository within the platform so that people can access this material at any time.

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Best Practice CureAccelerator does a good job at visual design and user-friendliness. However, based on the research we have conducted, we found that there are still some functions that need to be better enhanced in order to boost the platform:• It can be more convenient for users to find the information they are looking for.• It can provide users with the opportunity to participate in a of activities, and

discussion amongst users can be more active• Create a better balance between supply and demand of funding.• It seems like the website is the only source to get to know about the • organization. It is advisable to create links to CureAccelerator’s • social media sites on the platform to increase traffic to the platform.

In order to better build an interactive and sustainable drug-repurposing ecosystem and robust community, we found and did research on the websites that could serve as a good example to learn and take ideas from.

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Best Practice Example

Information retrieval ability

Grants.Gov:www.grants.gov

Interactive Community

American Mathematical Society:www.ams.org

CrowdfundingExperiment: www.experiment.com

Traffic generation between sites

National Science Foundation:http://www.nsf.gov

http://www.grants.gov/

http://www.ams.org/

http://www.experiment.com/

http://www.nsf.gov/

http://www.nsf.gov/

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Best Practice - Information retrieval ability

Information retrieval (IR) is the activity of obtaining resources relevant to an information need from a collection of information resources. *

The ability to find and retrieve relevant information has always been important, whether it is a physical process of manually sifting through filing cabinets or, more commonly now, a machine based process. Locating and retrieving the right information quickly can provide on-line platforms with an advantage.

* Taken from Belkin, N. J., & Croft, W. B. (1992). Information filtering and information retrieval: Two sides of the same coin?. Communications of the ACM, 35(12), 29-38.

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Best Practice - Information retrieval ability

In this case, we chose http://www.grants.gov as a good example to learn from.

Grants.gov is an E-Government initiative operating under the governance of the Office of Management and Budget. Under the President's Management Agenda, the office was chartered to deliver a system that provides a centralized location for grant seekers to find and apply for federal funding opportunities.

In order to make it easier for grant seekers to search for different sources of funding, Grants.gov has created a detailed filter bar which contains various categories related to different funding to help users narrow down their choices.



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Best Practice－ Information retrieval ability

• Offer clear keyword(s) searching.• Give broad search criteria, which

makes it easy for users to look for the resources they want , even if they don’t have detailed information about their search.

• Show the exact quantity of funding sources in each categories.

• Allow users to specify the search by “funding number” for each source of funding.

The filter bar of Grants.Gov How to create an efficient searching bar

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• Learning from best practice

Best Practice-Information retrieval ability

Current outlook of CureAccelerator’s

search engine.

Creating specific tags for different researches.

Adding key words searching

Creating classification for different types of

illness

Based on funding amount, divide researches into

various categories

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Best Practice－ Interactive Community

Interactive community means that the activities being held on the platform create opportunities for users to communicate with each other and enlarge the organization’s social impact. Building a robust on-line community can promoteinteraction between users which produces beneficial results for all parties:• Creates Synergy for better progress.• Provides a valuable platform for feedback.• Allows like minded individuals to share and

exchange ideas. *• Creates a sense of common purpose and vision.*

The American Mathematical Society does a good job at building robust collaborative on-line activities. These activities not only promote research that is posted on its website, but also foster an awareness of the discipline and its connections to other disciplines and everyday life.

*Taken from O'Murchu, I., Breslin, J. G., & Decker, S. (2004, August). Online Social and Business Networking Communities. In ECAI Workshop on Application of Semantic Web Technologies to Web Communities (Vol. 107).

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Best Practice -Interactive Community

AMS is a robust research community To further the interests of mathematical research, scholarship and education, serving the national and international community through publications, meetings, advocacy and other programs.*

WWW.AMS.ORG

Robust collaborative on-line Activities

Chatrooms for specific

topic

On-line forums

MemberWebinars

Cross-disciplineProgram

Publication

*Taken from www.Ams.org

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Best Practice - Interactive Community

Member Webinars• The meetings and conferences of the AMS provide members with an

environment that is stimulating, rewarding, well-organized, and affordable. Members have the opportunity to network informally with colleagues.

Cross-discipline programs• Through this feature , members can explore mathematics in other places,

learn more about educational issues, find a research fellowship, and increase diversity in the mathematical sciences.

Publication• AMS serves the active community by publishing books that further their

researchers’ projects, awareness, education, and the profession while generating resources that support other Society programs and activities.

Chatrooms for specific topics• Connect people who are interested in the same field• Create Q&A interaction among users.• Promote deeper discussions.

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Best Practice－ CrowdfundingUsually, the investment for medical research is a large amount of money. Among 895 total users in the platform, less than 10% are funders. Based on this situation, we recommend a supplemental solution-crowdfunding, because it can scatter the financial pressure on single funders and double marketing and media exposure.

Experiment.com is an excellent example as a platform for funding scientific discoveries. If CureAccelerator.org plans tolaunch this function, Experiment.com is a good place to learn.



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Experiment.comBest Practice－ Crowdfunding

The Public Funding ModelBackers fund scientists directly, so there is no middleman or overhead involved (compared to 50-60% when receiving a grant at a university).Experiment.com is an all-or-nothing funding platform. This means the project must reach the funding target, or no one's pledges are charged.Project Review & ApprovalAnyone can propose a new experiment, as long as the results can be shared openly.All projects are rigorously reviewed, provided feedback, and scientifically approved by the Experiment.com team. Scientific ImpactScientists share progress, data, and results directly with backers. Many of these results are widely available as open access and citable. As a backer, you'll be able to see how much of a scientific impact you've made. There have been 20 published papers in scientific journals through funded experiments!

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Best Practice－ CrowdfundingBeautiful& attractive outlookDesign of every project

Clearly category tags

Detailed/ specific/ visualized status Information about every project

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Best Practice－ Crowdfunding

Lab notesScientists share their process and findings through Experiment’s open lab notebook. Funders can follow research developments.

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Best Practice - Traffic Generation between sites Social media is another great place to generate

active participation in organizations. Networks like Linkedin and Facebook give companies the ability to communicate directly with their audience from different perspectives and build a rapport that exceeds anything websites can offer them.*

Traffic Generation between sites means creating entries in the organization’s social media platforms to increase the visitor flow between all sites. Through official on-lineplatforms, users can go easily to social media sites to get detailed and updated news, and the other way round. This builds a reciprocal circle among sites and allows CureAccelerator to learn about people through social media.

*Taken from Yoo, Y., & Alavi, M. (2001). Media and group cohesion: Relative influences on social presence, task participation, and group consensus. MIS quarterly, 371-390.

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Best Practice -Traffic Generation between sites

NSF uses a variety of social media tools to share news about research NSF funds, funding opportunities offered by the foundation, job openings at NSF and more. It creates a special page to post different links to its social media platforms using clear categories. Additionally, it also provides links to download its apps.

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Assortedlinks to different social mediaplatforms

Different classification of linksWithin the platform.

Best Practice－ Traffic Generation between sites

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Best Practice Section

Information retrieval ability Boosting the platform

Interactive Community Networks

Crowdfunding Social Media& On-line Marketing

Traffic generation between sites Social Media& On-line Marketing

Further details about each best practice can be found in different sections of this document, as follows:

Best Practice - Recommendations

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Part 2: Social Media & Online Marketing Strategy

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Social Media Marketing Strategy 1. Build community around drug repurposing and medical researchA brand community from a customer-experiential perspective is a fabric of relationships in which the user is situated. Crucial relationships include those between the user and the Cure Accelerator, between the user and the firm, between the customer and the platform in use, and among fellow users. We can strengthen brand community by facilitating shared customer experiences which means social media platform and online video marketing.

2. Driving ConversionsConversion marketing is the act of converting site visitors into paying customers. In this case, it is critical to drive the platform visitors into users. One of smartest reasons to use social media is for the potential boost it can have to your conversion efforts. Whether you’re looking to drive sales, increase leads or simply drive people to action, conversions are an easily traceable goal in the realm of social media.

3. Increase pubic awarenessIt’s important to stay relevant. If customers aren’t aware of your brand and what it stands for, your business may be spinning its wheels. When customers are aware of your brand and interact with it on different social media sites, they are more likely to recommend it to their friends by liking posts on Facebook and retweeting you on Twitter.

Goal

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Part1: Online VideoVideo is the future of content marketing. That is, if it's not the here and now. Various studies show more than half of companies are already making use of the medium – a figure that's predicted to rise as more and more realize the possibilities.

Objectives:

• Brand awareness and engagement: Helps Cure

Accelerator measure users’ knowledge of its existence,

at the same time, bring their attention by making them feel involved. (View,

subscribes, comment…etc.)

• Viral sharing: An commercial video gets

more immediate attention and views compare to pictures

or blogs.

• Post product videos and demos: An example would

be how to use the Cure accelerator platform

tutorial. Or provide an Information video to

explain how does the Cure accelerator work.

• Create a video series to share: Compare to

one-time commercial, a video series will bring

consistency and increase customer

loyalty.

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Part1: Online VideoVideo is the future of content marketing. That is, if it's not the here and now. Various studies show more than half of companies are already making use of the medium – a figure that's predicted to rise as more and more realize the possibilities.

√ Determine ownership of video execution: You can create the video by using your employees, or hire a video production agency.

√ Determine distribution channels: Create Youtube channels, blogs, publish the video on different social media.

√ Create social strategy for promotion: Before release the videos, creates posters, promotes on social media platform and weekly emails. The best time is to start promote the video at least three weeks before the releasing date.

√ Get users include researchers, clinicians, funders, partners, and influencers involved in video creation: Creating surveys if possible before start on the videos. In the survey they can be only few questions like “What would you like to know the most about Cure accelerator?”

Actio

n Ite

m

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Online video Plan A

There are few B2C marketers that are looking ahead to virtual reality experiences to share content. So video is the best way to appeal to as many of a user’s senses at one time as possible. Good video tells a story better than any other medium by using both sight and sound senses to help viewers process a message.Drug repurposing is still an unfamiliar word to most of the people. This video can simply be both people who don’t know about drug repurposing and professionals in the medical field talk about what is the meaning of this word to them separately. This video production can be low budget, easy to control and target at people who don’t know much about drug repurposing.

“Old Ways to Fight New” Campaign (3min)

Example: “Like a Girl” Campaign

The Always “Like a Girl” campaign video stood out on multiple levels. A B2C video, obviously, it appeals empathizes with the target audience and empowers through education and insight.

Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjJQBjWYDTs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjJQBjWYDTs


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Online video Plan B

This type of video is a very good marketing tool in the sense that positively presented information leaves viewers with the kind of impression that keeps them coming back. It’s similar to documentary video, but the different is you can manipulate the story line. Factual and anecdotal storytelling are also very well suited to corporate anniversary videos that seek to generate excitement on the part of employees and other target audiences, including users.

The content of the video can be a recent event associated or promoted by Cure accelerator like the “5th Annual Drug Repositioning, Repurposing and Rescue Conference”; a research progress start from the platform, which has a storyline, a peak and an ending; or even a patient’s life after using the repurposing drug. The Mockumentary video may be not very subjective, but it is also low budget, don’t need many staff, only required simple equipment, and requires less time compare to a documentary video.

“Second Chance in Life” Mockumentary Video

Examples: Secrets of the Superbrands

Alex Riley thinks he's immune to brands. When it comes to fashion, technology and food brands he just goes for the cheapest and what works for him. So how did that pair of Adidas trainers get in his wardrobe? With the help of marketers, brain scientists and exclusive access to the world of the super brands Alex sets out to find out why we buy them, trust them, even idolize them. Program created by the BBC

Video link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fd7lfcnlb9c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fd7lfcnlb9c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fd7lfcnlb9c

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Online video Plan C“Why Drug Repurposing?” Animated Video(3min)

Example: “Girl Effect” Animated Video

This organization “Girl Effect” aims to stop child marriage, help young girls to live a healthy, safe lives so they can grow up to be a healthy woman. “CARE” has been working in the poorest communities in over 72 countries for 65 years. The animated video successfully boost their public awareness in a very short period of time.

Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjJQBjWYDTs

Animated explainer videos are increasingly becoming popular. They get the message across in a simple and quick way by allowing the producer to focus 100% on representing the content that matters while stripping away any non-relevant detail.

Animated videos are also a great way to compare and highlight different types of products. They also allow you to reduce complex topics to simple, friendly visuals and emphasize character expressions. In this case, we can use animated video to create a info-graphic commercial in order to answer two questions for the audience: “what is drug repurposing?” and “who is Cure accelerator?”


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Online Video: Measurement

You can find robust metrics across three kinds of reports in YouTube Analytics:• Earnings reports (including estimated earnings and ad performance reports)• Watch-time reports (including watch time, views, traffic sources, and audience retention reports• Engagement reports(including subscribers and annotations reports)

Key Metrics

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Part2: LinkedIn

• Brand awareness and engagement: On Linkedin, it is more easily to get attentions and connections from the target audience actively compare to YouTube, twitter or Facebook.

• Share a mix of relevant links, blog posts, and engaging content: Linkedin company page

• Promote upcoming events (online) : At least post three times when promoting an event. Not only on the company page, you can also publish this in other relative professional groups. The “5th Annual Drug Repositioning, Repurposing and Rescue Conference” would be a good start in this case.

• Engage with influencers: Reply the comment, answer questions and actively reach out to other drug repurposing groups or networks.

Obj

ectiv

e:

LinkedIn company pages are essential. Not just for brand visibility, but also for building and sustaining a useful community around your products and services.

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Part 2: LinkedIn

√ Encourage employee participation: If you want to build a good looking and professional Linkedin page, especially at the beginning of building it, almost every employee needs to:

1. Creates Linkedin profile. 2. Put Cure Accelerator in their profile and match it with their working experience. (In this case, when people search online for “Cure accelerator”, they can easily track down to them.)3. Link to the company page4. Encourage them to comment or like the important organizatonal posts.

√ Monitor and participate in Q&A: Using the analytic tools to check the views and subscribes every 30-40 minutes. This can help you to find more suitable groups or networks that can bring the most awareness to your brand. √ For the platform users, researchers, clinicians and funders, let them link their LinkedIn page to the home page.

Action Item:

√ Create and join relevant groups: Drug repurposing, Medical field or even medical schools. Broad networking brings great awareness.

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Part 2: LinkedIn

Updates:A table

showing the most recent updates and the following

data

Key

Met

rics

The Analytics tab provides companies with metrics and trends about their Company Page. Company Page administrators can view rich data which divided into specific sections: Updates, Followers, and Visitors. More detail please go to “LinkedIn Help – Company Page”.

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Part 2: LinkedIn

Followers:provides

information on where followers

are coming from, their

demographics, trends, and competitive comparisons

Key

Met

rics


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Part 2: LinkedIn

Visitors:The visitors

section contains information on

visitors and viewers of your

page.

Key

Met

rics

*Taken from LinkedIn Help** Taken from Wikipedia

*** Taken form StrategyMarket


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Part 3: Facebook Objective:

• Promote upcoming events and online events: Take “5th Annual Drug Repositioning, Repurposing and Rescue Conference” as an example, make it sounds like you are inviting a friend about this exciting event. “Hey, we have this exciting conference here, and I’m sure you will like it.”

• Engage with influencers: we suggest organizations to put personality into their Facebook page: Be consistent with this personality and casual when replying, post or comment. For example, CureAccelerator, as a drug-repurposing platform, can be a doctor who loves animals, care about patient’s health and is passionate about his job.

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Part 3: Facebook Objective:

Brand awareness and engagement: The major difference between Facebook and LinkedIn is the tone you use. For Linkedin, you need to sound like you sitting at your office. However, when it comes to Facebook, it feels like you are lying at your sofa and messaging with your friends.

Lead generation or customer acquisition: Same with the LinkedIn,however the difference will be you will have a closer look to your target audience on Facebook.

Share a mix of relevant links, blog posts, and engaging content: For Facebook company page, we always recommend them to create a blog and you can simply post anything on your Facebook page from the blog. Also you can post news, interesting facts in the drug field, or videos.

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Part 3: Facebook Action Item:

√ Set up sponsored posts and ads: Go to www.facebook.com/advertising and fill out the click the Create an Ad button. These ads are very similar to Google ads. The one key difference is that you can get very specific as to whom you want your ads to be displayed to. They will give you an “estimated reach” to tell you how many people meet the criteria you set up.

√ Set up Facebook tabs that sync to your marketing automation platform.

√ Set up Facebook link on the Cure Accelerator home page.

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Part 3: Facebook

Key Metrics:

Google Analytics can be used, but Facebook provides Insight. You should monitor this regularly. It will tell you how many new Likes you received, how many unsubscribes and information on engagement. You can track the engagement against what you where doing to see what works and what doesn’t.

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Part 3: Facebook Suggestions on business posting:

1. Be fun. Use interactive posts. Ask questions. Combine with the personality we suggested in the objectives above. 2. Use videos – people like them. Be sure to embed them instead of sending the user off to YouTube.com. You don’t want them to leave your page if you can help it. 4. Grow you email list with Facebook. Add the link for users to follow your email list at the end of every post. 5. Tie your posts back to the Cure accelerator website. (At the end of each post.)6. Use full links when linking to other sites. For Twitter you use abbreviated URLs, but on Facebook, with full links. 9. Short posts (less than 80 characters) seem to work better than longer posts. On Facebook, people rarely read a random post carefully, because their attention time is even shorter compare to LinkedIn or YouTube. 10. Photos and Videos get the most attention, followed by links, followed by status updates with questions.

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Part 4: Weekly EmailObjective:

• To inform: Email newsletters circulated within a company are used to distribute information intended for effected employees in the company. At the same time, keep the users updated.

• To reduce email overload: Instead of sending multiple notices, announcements, or acknowledgments to various users and employee groups, a company can make use of email newsletters as a more efficient distribution of information. b

• Provide external narrative: Both users and employees have their own families, friends, and social circles. So explaining why companies do things and giving them an easy way to be proud and spread the word, can be a very strong catalyst for word-of-mouth.

• To create consistency: Aside from distributing relevant information for everyone in a company, email newsletters can also be used as tools to encourage camaraderie among employees. At the same time, always remind the users of Cure accelerator’s existence.

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Part 4: Weekly EmailAcition Item:

√ Format design: Constant Contact, IContact, GetResponse and others specialize in helping you to send professional looking emails, with graphics and videos. They help you track how many people respond and open your newsletters and handle things like unsubscribing. √ Add social media links at the end of each email. (Facebook, LinkedIn and Youtube)

√ Keep them updated: Feature a project, feature a user/organization, announce any new RFPs or upcoming deadlines, try to talk about some match that’s already been made (success), and give current stats. 1-3 times a week. √ Less is more: Making the content simply and solid. You don’t need to post lots of things like on social media. The most important event or announce comes first.

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Part 4: Weekly Email

Key Metrics:

1. Click through Rate: The percentage of email recipients who clicked on one or more links contained in a given email. Use Hubspot to measure it.

2.Bounce Rate: The percentage of your total emails sent that could not be successfully delivered to the recipient's inbox.

3. List Growth Rate: The rate at which your email list is growing.

4. Email Sharing/Forwarding Rate: The percentage of email recipients who clicked on a “share this” button to post email content to a social network, and/or who clicked on a “forward to a friend” button.

Taken from: Hubspot.com

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Part 4: Weekly EmailSuggested Tools:

1. Hubspot (Clickthrough rate, bounce rate and list growth rate):

Taken from: Hubspot.com

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2. Litmus (Clickthrough rate, bounce rate, list growth rate and sharing rate):

Taken from: Litmus.com

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3.Mailjet (Clickthrough rate, bounce rate, list growth rate and sharing rate):

Taken from: Mailjet.com

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Part 3: Leveraging the Network

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Introduction – what is a network?In information technology, a network is simply a series of points or nodes interconnected by communication paths. Networks can interconnect with other networks and contain other networks embedded in them.

*Taken from Searchnetworking.net** Taken from Wikipedia

*** Taken form Talifox

Networks have evolved and their reach has expanded to virtually every aspect of our personal and professional lives:

Social Network:

Social networks are not about what you know, but who you know. They are social structures made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors**.

Knowledge networks:

A knowledge network signifies a number of people and resources , and the relationships between them, that are able to capture , transfer and create knowledge, for the purpose of creating value***. They recognize that nobody knows everything or has all the resources, and therefore aim to connect all those who can contribute in each particular way.

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Introduction - Benefits of knowledge networks*

Accelerated Knowledge

Transfer

Giving people easier and quicker access to relevant knowledge and other people and resources.

Costs related to organizing, finding and leveraging knowledge are minimized.

Creativity

*Taken from Talifox

04

03

01

02

Costs and Optimization

Diverse groups of self-motivated and enthusiastic people, brought together to pursue a common goal.

Creating, sharing and applying knowledge between members. They allow people to know who knows or has what.

Productivity and Agility

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Introduction – Components and success factors

ELEMENTS

Nodes or actors: individuals, groups or organizations that belong to the network (in this case, funders, clinicians and funders).

Connections: Ties that each node has with other members of the network. Some nodes have stronger ties than others to other components of the network.

KEY SUCCESS FACTORS

Technology: Appropriate platform to enable participation; allowing people

to connect, find what they need, collaborate and share information and resources with others in the network.

Incentive Structure: Set of actions and mechanisms in place to motivate people to join the network and actively participate in all the activities within it.

Mix of members: Adequate mix of members, so that the network is balanced and all of them see value in belonging and actively participating. They have to be both empowered (access to the resources and information they need to participate) and committed (willing to participate on a constant basis)

Reciprocity - Collaboration: The extent to which people within the network rreciprocate other people’s actions, so that there’s permanent participation and sharing within the network.

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Introduction – Basic network diagnosis Understanding how these elements work and interact plays a critical role when attempting to make the most of the network and to leverage its power so that it fulfills its intended mission.

Nodes Ties Technology Mix of members

Incentive Structure Reciprocity

Opp

ortu

nitie

s for

impr

ovem

ent

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Demographic analysis and recommendations

446

60

60

156

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Researcher Clinician FunderGeneral User Others

Based on the current demographic information of registered users of CureAccelerator, there are two primary characteristics need attention:

1) Overall among entire subscribers of the platform, the numbers of members in different groups are unbalanced.• Researchers take the largest portion.• The numbers of general users and

others keep in the middle.• Clinicians and funders have the smallest

amount of people.

2) Identifications of the categories of “general user” and “others” are unclear. Specifically, within the group of “others,” only one subscriber was notified as “company representative”; and the rest 78 were left blank.

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Demographic analysis and recommendationsDemographics such as education, profession, occupation, and location all provide valuable information for the platform to better understand its users and improve its functionality, so that it can offer higher-quality service to subscribers and increase the collaboration amongst them.

Having a small number of funders can make the platform less attractive for other types of users, especially researchers, to actively engage in.

1

2Having a small amount of clinicians can affect the generation and discussion of ideas for RFPs, project submission, and the promotion of the platform.

3

2Disproportion of numbers of different user types can lead to a network imbalance for CureAccelerator.

1The demographic information of CureAccelerator subscribers can be enhanced.

Opportunity for improvement

1

Explanation

The platform cannot fully identify subscribers’ needs and design suitable services, if there are not certain types of information such as location, occupation, and company industry etc.

The imbalance of the current network can result in a critical mass problem. A critical mass in this case, is the minimal amount of members of each group to encourage and maintain collaboration within the platform.

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Approach to improve demographics

Define a set of required information for all types of stakeholdersThe current required information for members, leaves relatively limited space for the platform to move when designing services. Thus, in order to improve the quality and quantity of its offerings, and to create a more collaborative environment; the platform could redefine the required questions or ask for additional information. To do this, we suggest to include the following to the minimum required questions:

Location: Add city, state and country as a requirement. Geographical information of members can clearly show places where a majority of members locate. This information can be decisive when planning activities and events because: 1) holding activities and events in major locations shared by a large

number of members can help connect them and enhance their collaboration;

2) holding activities and event in places such as top ranking universities can attract more potential users and build the platform’s reputation and publicity.

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Define a set of required information for all types of stakeholders

Occupation: Add defined occupational options (student, university professor, company representative etc.) for general users and others. Occupational information implies not only a person’s educational background, but also his or her personal contacts. In this case, more detailed occupational information of general users and others can help: 1) categorize these members effectively by their professional traits;2) design activities and events that apply to more subscribers, especially

users of these two groups (for example, online discussions held by top ranking university professors; university-based conferences that invite medical students, etc.).

3) improve these two groups’ engagement, and increase the overall collaboration within the community.

The current required information for member provides relatively limited space for the platform to refer to when designing services. Thus, in order to improve the quality and quantity of its offerings and to create a more collaborative environment, the platform should redefine the required questions. To do this, we suggest to include the followings to the minimum required questions:

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Define a set of required information for all types of stakeholdersThe current required information for member provides relatively limited space for the platform to refer to when designing services. Thus, in order to improve the quality and quantity of its offerings and to create a more collaborative environment, the platform should redefine the required questions. To do this, we suggest to include the followings to the minimum required questions:

Company: Add general company industry options (education, pharmacy, etc.) for all types of stakeholders as a requirement. Information of company industry can briefly show what a company does. Based on the current data of users, the majority of company names do not contain key words that obviously indicate their industry types. In this case, offering options of company industry types can help the platform:1) categorize users by their company industries;2) design activities and events for various purposes according to different

needs of industries (for example, receptions for pharmaceutical companies; conferences of hot-topic disease for university professors, etc.).

3) increase intercommunication and collaboration amongst subscribers.

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How to leverage the network better?Taking into account the network diagnosis and the demographics presented in the previous sections, we have identified 5 basic strategies to leverage the power of the existing network to increase activity, participation and collaboration within the platform:

Ties

CollaborationBalance

Incentives

Width

Number of nodes and member mix.

Connections between members.

“What is in it for people”?.

Connecting to the outside world.

Achieving results together.

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How to leverage the network better?

Balance: Number of nodes and member mix.

The network’s imbalance creates a critical mass problem, and without it, the network cannot really operate properly. It is paramount to increase both the number of funders and clinicians; first to make it more attractive for researchers to belong and second, to increase the chances of off label initiatives to be on the platform.

• Identify those opinion leaders that are nor registered yet. Have personal meetings with them and create a personalized recruitment strategy. • Identify clinicians that can be “community leaders” within the platform, based on their

reputation in the field, and on their activity and interest for repurposing. Involve them in some of the actions defined to boost the platform, like leading webinars and forums.

• Publicize such events on the web, through the CWR webpage and other medical publications on line. People will have to register to get into the event and the platform will have more members and their information.• Create campaigns for registered clinicians to become verified clinicians, so that they can

start participating more actively in the platform.

• Create campaigns for registered clinicians to become verified clinicians, so that they can start participating more actively in the platform. • Create opportunities for clinicians to participate and be recognized for it: Publishing

articles on the platform, directing traffic to and from CureAccelerator and the sites where they have published.

Identify

Increase

Engage

CLIN

ICIA

NS

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Identify

Increase

• Identify where other research sites are obtaining funding from and perform a cross analysis (which of them are in our database?). • Identify people who have or who currently fund health related causes like hospitals,

research centers (or specific research). This can be individuals, other NPO’s, corporations, governments, etc. • Identify where else is funder’s money going and what is there that attracts to them.

Corporate Funders: • For those who are looking for is exposure, create a way for them to put their dollars into

avenues that will give them either recognition from the outside, the opportunity to increase their reputation with their primary stakeholders, and to show how they can add value to the community.• For those who already have funding dollars and are not really concerned with exposure,

research on who in the organization has the authority to decide the destination of such resources and target them individually

Individual funders: • Determine where these funders go, where are they migrating to, and why (what is it about

those other places that attract to them, and what they do to get their attention).• Consider implementing a crowdfunding strategy, acting as the mediator organization to

bring funders and initiators together. The risks of this strategy are low and its easy to implement:

FUN

DERS

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Increase

Benefits of crowdfunding:• Helps to raise awareness about repurposing and the platform.• Can give researchers more exposure, in a field where they do not normally get

published or recognized. • Provides and avenue for researchers / clinicians to engage with their audience.• Low cost capital and engagement from those who may be interested in find alternative

treatments for a condition (because they are affected by it, or because they know someone who is), want to help but don’t have millions of dollars to do so.

Risks of crowdfunding:• The most prevalent risk is funder exhaustion, when donors are reached out to multiple

times.

Government: • Analyze the government spending records and determine what is it spending their money

on. We suggest doing this by state, to target those states where most pharmaceutical companies are, and/or those states that are investing more on research on repurposing and make a direct sell to those governments.

FUN

DERS

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Engage

• Define with them the kinds of illnesses or conditions they are interested in helping to reduce. Publish in the platform the most prevalent diseases funders are keen on helping with, and the total amount of dollars that could go to research in each particular field. • Send this information in the newsletter to all members, in addition to any information

regarding new funders interested in funding repurposing (there is no use in having a lot of resources if people don’t know about them).• Every so often (frequency TBD), send funders personalized emails with summaries of all

the projects and initiatives that could interest them. Act as and advisor more than as a broker. Create a collaboration room for both the researcher / clinician and the funder to discuss the initiative.

Specific strategies for crowdfunding: • To prevent funder exhaustion we recommend finding “the right crowd” by narrowing

down targets by condition or disease (partner with support groups to gather information).• Leverage your social media presence to promote crowdfunding events. • Partner with organizations that work at prevention and promotion (like Susan G Komen for

the cure or the Multiple Sclerosis Association of America); as well as organizations that work at research for specific illnesses (like the Brain and Behavior research foundation or The Children’s Heart Foundation) to target potential individual funders.

FUN

DERS

80


While the platform provides a great milieu for people to look for information and connect with others, the collaboration opportunities need to be enhanced and fostered. The objective of this strategy is to create a sense of community amongst members, where users feel motivated to participate on a constant basis and to contact others based on their expertise, experience with past projects, etc.

Ties: Connections between members.

Identify IntroducePromote

GroundingCreate

ownership Facilitate Recognize

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Identify researchers, clinicians and funders who are interested in the same field(s) or condition(s). Create groups within the platform for each of those fields with all the relevant members in (people can always opt out). One actor can be part of multiple groups. If funder information cannot be disclosed, the group can also just have researchers and clinicians or have anonymous funders.

Introduce members to each other. Send an email to members of each group with a summary of their credentials and thanking them for their membership. Offer each group the possibility of looking at all members profile, list of publications, current research etc.

Create the first discussion for each group and offer to be the first moderator. The goal here is to establish in more detail the subject(s) they would be interested in discussing, related to the subject of the whole group; as well as how would they like to start collaborating between them.


Identify

Introduce

Promote Grounding

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Encourage members of each group to assign a chair (can rotate) and to create a discussion agenda for the year. This doesn’t have to be overwhelming, let them know is up to them whether they meet once a month, once every quarter, or twice a year; the important thing is to connect them and to create ties between them.

Give people the means to meet inside the platform, using the collaboration rooms suggested in “boosting the platform”. Allow them also to store there the minutes of the meetings and to post any additional documentations they regard pertinent to the discussions.

• Publish conclusions of their discussions / collaboration in the platform, available for everyone to see. Include the main points / conclusions in the newsletter and if possible, mention successful funding matches for a project related to that group’s field. • At the end of the year, publicly recognize teams who have been very active. Have them publish an

article where they speak of their experience, with a list of do’s, don’t’s, what they have gained from it, and lessons learned; for others to improve their own groups or to promote participation.


Introduce

Create ownership

Facilitate

Recognize

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Width: Connecting to the outside world

.Networks do not only exist to connect members that belong to a tight close community. Sometimes, networks allow exactly the opposite, to connect such community with others outside of it; others that can bring knowledge, resources, connections and more power to the network. The objective of this strategy is to make the network wider, creating connections either with other platforms that promote problem solving, outside experts, pharmaceutical companies or all of the above.

It is an innovation marketplace that connects firms that have a challenge to be solved (Seekers), with people who can provide solutions fro those challenges or problems (Solvers). Once a seeker has accepted a solution, the solver is rewarded a prize.

Suggestion 1: Partner with another research – problem solving platform, like Innocentive, to leverage the power of both networks.

What is Innocentive?

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We can leverage the power of this network for drug repurposing

85



.There are 2 ways in which CureAccelerator and Innocentive would collaborate together: 1. Innocentive offers the possibility of creating “External Challenges”, partnering with outside organizations and redirecting seekers to their website so that they read the existing RFP’s:

Link to access external challenges within the Innocentive Platform

Link to a specific RPF in CureAccelerator, title, date, deadline and funding available (or prize)

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.2. “Repost” RFP’s in Innocentive as challenges, under a specific Pavilion for CureAccelerator. The pavilion includes information about the mission of the organization (in this case about CureAccelerator), as well as an explanation of the kinds of challenges available for people to solve. This offers the possibility for seekers to access all the challenges created by CureAccelerator, instead of navigating the whole database to find them.

Link to access all the pavilions within the Innocentive Platform

Link to CureAccelerator’s, Pavilion

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.AztraZeneca is a good example of a specific Pavilion within Innocentive; and of the application of this for repurposing:

Novel Disease Indications for AstraZeneca Clinical Compounds

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.AztraZeneca is a good example of a specific Pavilion within Innocentive; and of the application of this for repurposing:

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.Benefits of partnering with Innocentive:

Redirects solvers with the desired profile to our platform, giving CureAccelerator the opportunity to increase the number of users, and therefore to broaden the existing community, with people who are very interested in repurposing.

Gives CureAccelerator exposure to the more than 375k users of the innocentive community. This will help create awareness about repurposing and about the platform itself.

Enhances solution creation and collaboration opportunities between professionals from different fields related to a specific project. Helps people interested in drug repurposing find each other easily and leverage the power of both platforms to achieve faster and more effective results.

Innocentive already has the required infrastructure to collaborate in teams, so if CureAccelerator were to partner with them, those resources could also be leveraged. This could potentially reduce collaboration costs (in this case, the costs in which the platform has to incur to enable collaboration amongst users) for CureAccelerator, while offering users the opportunity to collaborate sooner than if the developments were done inside the platform.

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Creates a new channel to access CureAccelerator, besides the emails from CWR and the CWR website.

This is especially important taking into account that when searching in Google for “drug repurposing”, “drug repositioning”, “drug repurposing services”, and “drug repurposing companies”; CureAccelerator does not appear as part of the search results (at least not in the first two pages).

This means that for someone who is not a member and is interested in either funding, or finding RFP’s or suggesting a project; CureAccelerator will not be an option.

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CureAccelerator could offer the platform for pharmaceutical companies to post their needs for research (like the AstraZeneca Pavilion). This could be in exchange of a fee or for free.Alternatively, CureAccelerator could partner with Innocentive to become the “repurposing” arm of the platform, so that they redirect pharmaceutical companies and interested solvers to CureAccelerator.

All repurposing challenges within Innocentive can contain a “repurposing” tag that allows users to find all the repurposing challenges within the platform. There could also be a link to the CureAccelerator platform; which would help to generate new traffic towards it.

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Incentives: What is in it for people?

The incentive structure of the platform can be improved in order to avoid causing a long-term social dilemma. A social dilemma is the situation in which an individual’s short-term interest conflict with a long-term collective goal. In this case, the members’ engagement of CureAccelerator may be affected negatively if users cannot obtain enough benefits for themselves. To deal with this, it is essential for the platform to strengthen its incentives for each stakeholder, based on their needs specifically.

Researchers

Step 1: Understand relations between stakeholders

Clinicians ResearchersFunders

ProjectsAnswer to

RFP’s

Clinicians Researchers

RFPs & Funds

RFPs & Funds

ProjectsAnswer to

RFP’s

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Step 2: Identify stakeholders’ motivations to use the platform

• To receive supports for projects: When clinicians submit project proposals and off label use ideas on the platform, they use it to collect both financial support (fund) and academic support (experiences, ideas, or suggestions shared by other members) to accomplish their research.

• To widen their personal network: Clinicians can use CureAccelerator as a communication platform to meet other users who share common interests and build their personal ties.

• To obtain valuable information: Clinicians can use the platform as database to look for treatments to cure patients, build knowledge via discussions, and generate repurposing ideas.

Clinicians

Funders

• To increase publicity: Publicity is to gain exposure via media to increase the public visibility of a company. From the perspective of funders, having more exposure through the platform is a good way to promote the brand or their care for the community.

• To build brand awareness: Brand (company) awareness is the extent to which a company is recognized by the public. For funders, building brand awareness is a significant step to broaden its business scope and encounter more business opportunities.

• To widen their business network: A strong business network can help funders unlock business opportunities, meet potential partners for ventures, and generate profitable cooperation.

• To make profit: Whether or not the platform can bring profits to funders directly determines their engagement. If the platform provides more potential for funders to find candidates to fund, they are more likely to be continuously involved in the CureAccelerator.

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Step 2: Identify stakeholders’ motivations to use the platform

Researchers

• To receive funds for projects: The primary purpose of researchers to use CureAccelerator is to collect funds for repurposing projects. If a large number of funders are actively engaging in the platform, it will create more potentials for researcher to receive funds, and researchers will be more willing to participate in the platform.

• To widen the personal network: Researchers can also use the platform as a communication tool, through which they can meet with other members and build personal networks.

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Step 3: Create incentives for stakeholders

• Suggestions: 1) Invite influential experts to the platform to host discussions and conferences. 2) Open an official blog for CureAccelerator and ask reputable researchers and clinicians to

publish exclusive repurposing articles and share related experiences. 3) Invite experts of various fields of studies as consultants to offer suggestions and feedbacks

to projects. • Reasons to do this:

By doing so, these influential experts can enhance their reputation and publicity; registered clinicians and researchers on the platform can express their opinions and exchange information. This helps people widen their knowledge and information network. In addition, from the perspective of funders, having these people on the platform means more experiences,higher reputation, and greater opportunities to achieve research objectives. Last but not least, for all these three groups, having experts on the platform helps them improve the quality of their projects.

Incentives for all

stakeholders

Invite influential clinicians and researchers

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• Suggestions: 1) Hold breakfasts/workshops twice a year.2) Hold conferences of current hot repurposing topics regularly.

• Reasons to do this:Having workshops every six months allows all stakeholders of the platform to meet new members and increase their personal ties.It also gives them the opportunity to share and exchange information received in the previous months. Current hot topics usually receive great attention from all stakeholders. Attending such events will help them gain valuable information and create new personal connections. It is also interesting for funders, since these events can provide valuable information on what field is getting more attention and where the resources could be directed at to increase success.

Incentives for all

stakeholders

Hold conferences and workshops on a regular basis

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• Suggestion:1) Give rewards to members who have kept a high engagement and collaboration over the

previous year. The reward can be a financial one or moral reward. 2) Invite members who have achieved extraordinary success in their researches to give

speeches and share their experiences and results.• Reason to do this:

Offering either financial or moral rewards to members in a public event encourages people who have done a good job with the platform to keep doing it, and the rest to actively engage in CureAccelerator.

Hold an annual thank-you event

Increase the proportion of funders within the community

Incentives for

clinicians and

researchers

• Increase the number of funders and the amount of available fund by 1) creating incentives to attract more funders (see next slide); 2) inviting more types of funders to the platform to increase the total amount of available fund (see “Balance”).

• Both of these suggestions offer more potential and opportunities for clinicians and researchers to receive funds in order to conduct their researches.

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Incentive for funders

• Suggestions:1) For less known funders or start-ups, the blog will focus on their company backgrounds,

current resources and advantages, investment intents, fields of interest etc.2) For those better known funders, the blog will feature their most outstanding

achievements/investments and introduce their resources,fund intents, and interested fields. • Reason to do this:

This funder section introduces and promote registered funders to a broad audienceThus, by implementing these suggestions, funders can receive greater exposure, increase public visibility, and enhance company awareness.


Create a funder section on blog

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Collaboration: Achieving results together.

Based on the foundations of the previous four indicators to improve the platform’s network, a much collaborative environment can be fostered and enhanced. Collaboration amongst members allows both them and the platform to achieve shared goals and gain benefits. To do so, it is crucial to create a collaborative working environment (CWE), where people share information and exchange opinions to reach a common understanding.

CWE Create a gift culture

Create relational practices

Define leadership

Facilitate collaboration

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Create relational practices

The gift culture is the situation where people are not forced to give rewards for valuables received, but are willing to do so. In this way, it provides a comfortable environment for members to collaborate more willingly. To achieve a gift culture, we suggest the platform to assign an internal consultant to provide daily coaching for members:• Help set up discussion for problems or unsolved questions appeared in projects.• Help look for potential teammates or funders to conduct a research.• Help set up follow-up meetings to check up with researches.

In order to achieve a high-quality collaboration amongst subscribers of CureAccelerator, it is paramount for the platform to lay the groundwork for its members, particularly to build and maintain social relationships within the community. Through this process, members can build personal ties with other members and increase their interactions on the platform. To do this, we suggest the following:• Offer breakfast/workshop.Inviting registered members and potential stakeholders to attend

the workshop every six months. Briefly Introduce key features of the platform and new features (if there have).Divide members into different groups to meet new people and discuss question. This helps current members to start new relations and helps new and potential stakeholders get to know the community and better understand the platform.

Create a gift

culture

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Define leadership

A right leadership can promote high-quality collaborative behavior and maximize the achievements of a team. Hence, it is important to assign leaders who are task- and relationship-oriented.* If there are not appropriate candidate for leadership who have academic abilities and good relations with other members, then it is alternative to assign multiple leaders to take charge of different tasks.• Assign leaders for different categories of researches: Based on the research types (diseases,

drugs, or devices etc.), assign leaders for every category. The platform can set up online voting for members to vote for the position, and the leaders can rotate. The responsibility of this position is to organize activities such as workshop, discussion etc. for its group members to share and exchange valuable information.

• Assign leaders for specific activities or events: Based on the topics of activities, leaders should be chosen according to their related academic abilities. For events such as conference host, leaders should be assigned to people who are more relationship-oriented.

*Gratton, L. & Erickson, T. (2007). Eight ways to build collaborative teams. Retrieved from https://hbr.org

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Facilitate collaboration

To effectively generate and enhance the collaboration within the community, the platform should also provide services to facilitate collaborative groups amongst members.• Occasional task force service: This service allows members to sign up for task force requests

for their researches. In this case, the platform can 1) choose the task force members from its current users who are experts in the same field of the researches; or 2) invite external experts to join the team.

• Conference of hot repurposing topics: Hot repurposing topics are those mostly studied researches and relatively have a larger amount of value for researchers, clinicians, and funders. Thus, holding conferences of current hot topics can encourage more users to participate in. Moreover, in order to better enhance the collaborative environment, the platform should 1) invite relationship-oriented people to host the discussion at conferences; 2) invite task-oriented experts to prepare the content; and 3) design a proper schedule to hold conferences on a regular basis to keep the collaboration amongst members.


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Final Recommendations and Next Steps

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Final RecommendationsAll the ideas and recommendations provided above are considered quick wins or action items that can be executed in the short term. We firmly believe these suggestions will allow CureAccelerator to unleash its full potential, while attracting more members to make the community stronger, more connected and much more collaborative. To guarantee implementation, we suggest CureAccelerator the following actions:

• Appoint a person to be in charge of project execution. • Create a project plan and a timeline to deploy all the activities outlined above.• Define the follow up mechanisms, to ensure everything is being executed according to

plan• Communicate progress to the organization and platform members. Make your victories

public. • Use all the suggested measurements and tools for the social media strategy; they will

help the organization quantify the results of the online marketing and social media strategy.


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Attachment: Survey Results

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Results of the User Survey (Common Question)

Everyday Serveral times a week

About once a week Several times a month

About once a month

Less than a month

-10%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

How often do you visit CureAccelerator.org?

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Search

engine

Email from Cures w

ithin re

ach

Presentation by Cures W

ithin Reach

at a co

nference

Presentation by Cures W

ithin Reach

at my i

nstitution

Launch

ing event

Friend or b

usiness/

academic

associa

te

Don't remember

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

How did you first hear about this site?

108


Never Rarely Occasionally A moderate amount A great deal I didn't know there was a disscussion

feature

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

How often do you participate in discussions on CureAccelerator?

109


-10%0%

10%20%30%40%50%60%70%

How have you managed your profile on CureAccelerator?

110


-10%0%

10%20%30%40%50%60%70%

Apart from discussions, what other activities would you like to engage in to connect with other users?

111


Extremely unlikely Unlikely Neutral Likely Extrmely likely0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

How likely are you to return to this website

112


Extremely unlikely Unlikely Neutral Likely Extremely likely0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

How likely are you to recommend this website

113

Results of the User Survey (Researchers& General Users)

-10%0%

10%20%30%40%50%60%70%

What do you use or have you used this platform for (choose all that apply)?

114

Results of the User Survey (For researchers)

56.67%

43.33%

Have you applied to be a "verified researcher" on CureAcceler-ator?

No

65%

24%

12%

I didn't know this was available I don't know why this is importantI haven't posted a project I didn't want to disclose the information

YES

115

Results of the User Survey (For funders)

Please specify if you are:

An individual funder

An organizational funder67%

33%

116


Yes, I have funded research through CureAccelerator

Yes, but not through CureAccelerator

No, I am still looking for research to fund on

CureAccelerator

No, I am still looking for research to fund on any

platform

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

Have you or your organization funded medical research before?

117


Up to $5000 $5000~$20000 $20000~$40000 $40000~$60000 Over $600000%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

What amount have you contributed or would you be willing to contribute for research through this platform?

118


What do you think about the supply of projects on the platform?

The project supply is so rich here that I can fully satisfy my needsThe project supply is good, but I still search on other platformsThe project supply is not enough to fulfill my needsThe project supply is inadequate. I have never found any projects that satisfy my needs or that I find interesting.80%

20%

0%

0%

cureaccelerator final deliverable

Documents