Acquiring experiential knowledge: how knowledge brokering practices support patient-centered innovation

Purpose Patient-centricity is a well-established healthcare principle that emphasizes active patient engagement as a driver of innovation. However, the regulatory environment in which pharmaceutical companies operate restricts direct interaction with patients, thereby limiting access to experiential knowledge, a form of tacit knowledge that patients develop through their lived experiences with illness. While this knowledge cannot be directly extracted, it emerges during clinical encounters between patients and healthcare professionals (HCPs). This paper examines how pharmaceutical companies leverage their sales force as brokers to access experiential knowledge indirectly through HCPs, thus supporting patient-centered innovation. Design/methodology/approach The exploratory case study of a pharmaceutical company in Italy draws on interviews and secondary data to identify the practices pharmaceutical representatives use in their interactions with HCPs to facilitate the emergence and articulation of patient experiential knowledge that they unconsciously possess. Findings This study identifies five distinct practices that brokers use to help HCPs elicit experiential knowledge, organized around two key objectives: grasping subtle cues and capturing transformative insights. Originality/value By framing brokerage as a set of relational, situated practices, this study demonstrates how brokers act as catalysts in a mediated externalization process, transforming experiential knowledge embedded in the patient–clinician relationship from a surfaced to an articulated state through their interactions with HCPs.