Markus Koester is Director of the Department Research Coordination Germany as part of the Discovery Research organization of Boehringer Ingelheim where he currently leads the communication efforts of the open innovation portal of Boehringer Ingelheim, opnMe.com. He has established scientific crowdsourcing as a new open innovation tool to attract externally generated new therapeutic concepts for Boehringer Ingelheim’s preclinical pipeline and was deeply involved in the launch of opnMe.com. Over his professional career Markus has accumulated broad experience in pharmaceutical drug discovery, development and innovation both in research and commercial roles.