R&D discovery-informatics program

Context

An AI program in drug-discovery informatics. Two alignment axes decide it: GxP/validation sign-off from Regulatory-QA (a hard gate), and the trust of bench scientists who will simply ignore a tool they don't believe.

The decision

Two gates, not one: the Regulatory-QA validation gate is formal and the bench-scientist trust gate is informal — miss either and the program is shelved regardless of model quality.

What most miss

Teams optimize for the sponsor and forget scientists can't be ordered to trust a model. In R&D, informal adoption authority outweighs org power — the bench decides in practice.

Stakes

Win Regulatory but lose the bench and the tool ships to an empty room; win the bench but skip validation and it never ships.