Fail better

A global network for digital creativity and collaboration

Welcome to our Digital Innovation Hubs, where you can work side-by-side with digital masterminds from promising tech start-ups in the health-tech ecosystem.

With the ambition of connecting local healthcare entrepreneurs, tech specialist, and innovative thinkers to find better solutions for global health challenges, Novo Nordisk is building a global network of Digital Innovation Hubs. Strategically positioned in some of the leading health-tech ecosystems worldwide – Singapore, Shanghai, London, Princeton/NYC, Copenhagen, Bangalore, Sao Paulo, Tel Aviv, Berlin – each local hub will play a vital role in connecting and supporting the best talent and ideas.

Inspired by the words of novelist Samuel Beckett, "Try again. Fail again. Fail better," the Digital Innovation Hubs are tasked to embrace the next “moonshot” idea and accelerate the digital transformation of the healthcare ecosystem.

It’s very much a start-up vibe, and every day brings new and exciting challenges.

The hubs serve as a bridge between a large pharmaceutical company and entrepreneurs who concentrate on Novo Nordisk’s primary disease areas. Our objective is to nurture thrilling and ground-breaking innovation at the intersection between digital technologies and healthcare.

The hubs are structured for the mutual benefit of everyone involved. Novo Nordisk provides the funding, therapy area expertise, data, and technical support that can empower our partners to initiate pilot projects and, in time, scale them globally.

But our Digital Innovation Hubs are not just about work; they are, at their core, hubs of creativity and collaboration. As an example, the Digital Innovation Hub at the IT-University of Copenhagen, which has a more academia-centric collaboration model, recently hosted a 24-hour hackathon called “Cloud Fever” – an event that challenged cross-functional teams to build the most complete and efficient cloud-based solution that could be used in medical research.

In addition, they also hosted a social run – bringing together people from the data, IT, and tech ecosystem. Events like these encourage a sense of community – and they hopefully attract talented individuals who may not have previously considered working in the pharmaceutical industry.

“We believe the future is digital. Disease management has become much more than just a drug and as a life science company we should consider how to leverage digital to improve the lives of patients beyond the medicine,”

Ashlee Bessolo, Head of Digital Innovation Hub in USA at Novo Nordisk

This is important. The Digital Innovation Hubs are unique to Novo Nordisk, as they are not focused on drug manufacturing or biotechnology, their focus is solely on digital solutions that enable entire value chains to make impact at scale.

“It’s very much a start-up vibe, and there’s no one size fits all in terms of the day-to-day. It’s just a broad-brush smashing together of the best talents who can and want to facilitate real-world change.”

Ashlee Bessolo, Head of Digital Innovation Hub in USA at Novo Nordisk

As such, job openings related to the hubs are less “chemist” or “biologist” and more “innovation analyst”, “business development” or even “business consultant.” The ambition is to embrace talent from all corners of the tech spectrum. So, whether you're a junior or a senior professional, a front-end or back-end wizard, a cloud-native enthusiast, a creative wunderkind or an on-prem aficionado, if you’ve been wanting to get your foot into the door of the pharmaceutical world, this is the elevator to take.