A Marriage of Large and Small: R & D for Healthcare Products
The most critical factor for success in the pharmaceutical industry is the discovery of novel drugs that treat major illnesses for which there had been, up to then, only inadequate kinds of treatment. Until a decade or so ago, most drugs were discovered through the in-house research of major pharmaceutical companies. But now these major companies are increasingly relying on small firms and academia for drug discovery, while concentrating on their core competences of drug development and marketing. A similar pattern is emerging in other parts of the healthcare industry. This article discusses the synergy between small and large firms in healthcare and suggests that this pattern may become a general one for all innovative industries.
Pharmaceutical Firms and the Transition to Biotechnology: A Study in Strategic Innovation
During the twentieth century, the pharmaceutical industry experienced a series of dramatic changes as developments in science and technology generated new opportunities for innovation. Each of these transitions forced existing firms to develop new capabilities. The authors examine the most recent such transition, the shift to molecular genetics and recombinant DNA technology (1970 to the present), and explain how and why this transformation differed from the previous ones in pharmaceuticals. Small biotech startups played an important role in this transition, and the large pharmaceutical firms that began to enter the field had to develop new strategies for innovation. Two major strategies were adopted by the early movers, all of which created various kinds of alliances with the small biotech businesses. By the mid-1990s, the leading pharmaceutical manufacturers had established significant capabilities in the new field, but they were continuing to work with specialized biotechs in order to innovate across a broad range of therapeutic categories.
Comparative Industrial Sociology and the Convergence Hypothesis
Industrial sociology grew spectacularly after World War II, concentrating on three areas: workers' relations with each other, their managers, and their unions; the social organization of the factory; and the impact of technology on social systems extending from the factory to the society. Unable to sus­ tain leadership in all of these areas, industrial sociology shrivelled as other fields invaded its domains. Human relations became the ideological property of the business schools; labor economics maintained its grip on industrial relations; industry-community relations waned as interest in community power soared; industrial organizations were absorbed into the study of com­ plex organizations; occupational sociology maintained research impetus in labor force analysis; and the sociology of the economy dominated the study of industry's institutional relationships. Industrial sociology survived on remnants: worker-machine relationships (job satisfaction, alienation, un­ employment), organizational responses to technological changes. and a bit of working-class ethnology. Enduring interest in technology, however, en­ abled industrial sociology to take part in sociology's expanding interest in comparative studies.