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The Indian pharmaceutical industry accounts for 8% of global production and exports medicines to over 200 countries. Multinational enterprises (MNEs) enter the Indian market either directly through the establishment of subsidiaries or indirectly through licensing arrangements. However, evidence on MNE’s contribution toward development in India in terms of capability enhancement and linkages or through other spillover effects is limited. The purpose of this research was to generate evidence on (a) contribution of MNEs in the pharmaceutical market in India, (b) nature and impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows in the Indian pharmaceutical sector, (c) contribution of MNEs in R&D and innovation in India, and (d) MNE’s contribution toward introducing new chemical entities (NCEs) and new biological entities (NBEs) in India through a mixed method research design. We conducted an in-depth quantitative analysis on multiple data sets and qualitative interviews of various stakeholders to generate a holistic understanding on the aforementioned research objectives. Our findings suggest that from the perspective of capability enhancement and linkages, the contribution of pharmaceutical MNEs in India is limited. We observed that majority of FDI investments are brownfield against desired greenfield investments. In addition, MNEs are investing far less of profit before tax (PBT) compared with Indian firms on research and development. However, MNEs are contributing significantly toward access to certain pharmaceutical segments like vaccines, hormones, and parenterals, which require sophisticated production facilities, advanced technology, and intellectual capital. Further, MNEs role in innovation and introduction of new medicines (new molecular entity [NME] and NBE New Chemical and Biological Entities (NCEs and NBEs)) in India is significant. We propose that creating a conducive policy environment and predictable regulatory environment can facilitate capability enhancement and linkages through MNEs. Some of the potential policy instruments include appropriate implementation of FDI policy and Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) policy to balance trade and public health.

Speed in new product introduction is a critical dimension of competition facing many firms in high‐tech industries. This is especially becoming more evident with shorter technological life cycles and increasing global competition. The dependent variable of interest studied is pharmaceutical firms′ ability to develop global new chemical entities (NCEs). Defines global NCEs as drugs that are approved in six major industrialized countries within four years of introduction. Using logistic regression, four variables were found to have a significant influence on firms′ ability to develop global NCEs: technological familiarity, product differentiation, competitive intensity and internal R&D skills. Discusses the managerial implications of these findings.

Research on innovation and knowledge management practice would benefit from examining science‐based innovation work, that is, innovations derived from the ability to exploit scientific know‐how, in greater detail. While much engineering innovation work may be predetermined through rational breakdown analysis, there is always a factor of chance and luck in scientific work. Scientific work is never linear and predictable but must always be envisaged as the outcome of a combination of rule‐governed activities and a certain degree of unconditioned discoveries. The purpose of this paper is to report on how practicing laboratory researchers in a major pharmaceutical company regard their innovation work as being what is always of necessity inherently indeterminate and therefore put demands on top management to allow for a reasonable amount of risk‐taking.

Case study methodology based on interviews with 36 laboratory scientists and managers in a major pharmaceutical company.

The paper concludes that innovation research and knowledge management studies need to regard science‐based innovation as a specific form of innovation not wholly capable of being managed through rationalist management control systems.

The paper bridges studies of innovation work in pharmaceutical industry with the perception of risk‐taking among the practicing researchers.

In a discourse on theology, “evil” is for certain scholars denoting the “absence of good.” When management, as being the totality of practices, technique, routines and standard operating procedures is perceived to do more harm than good, is it evil. Presents a narrative study of pharmaceutical research. According to a strategic management agenda, laboratory pre‐clinical research is seen as a core competence that delivers new chemical entities that become candidate drugs. Pharmaceutical researchers in discovery and development phases reject managerial practices because they in various ways limit scientific activities and impose control mechanisms. At the same time, pharmaceutical researchers emphasize the importance of leadership. The absence of genuine leadership and the emergence of managerial practices entailed a feeling of melancholia and loss of a successful past that will never be seen again, among the pharmaceutical researchers.

Life science innovation is a complex domain of professional work including scientific know-how, regulatory expertise, and commercialization and marketing skills. While the investment in basic life science research has soared over the last decades, resulting in a substantial growth in scientific know-how, the life science industry (and most notably pharmaceutical companies) unfortunately reports a meagre innovative output. In order to counteract waning innovation productivity, new organizational initiatives seek to better bridge and bond existing life science resources. The purpose of this paper is to report a case study of bio venture hub initiative located in a major multinational pharmaceutical company.

Drawing on institutional work literature, an empirical study based on case study methodology demonstrates that new life science collaborations demand both external and internal institutional work to challenge conventional wisdom, making the legal protection of intellectual properties a key factor in the field and that in turn complicates much firm collaborations. Such institutional work questions existing practices and opens up new pathways in life science innovation work.

The bio hub initiative, which in considerable ways breaks with the traditional in-house and new drug development activities located in enclosed R&D departments and in collaboration with clinical research organizations, demands extensive institutional work and political savoir-faire to create legitimacy and operational stability. Not only are there practical, legal, and regulatory issues to handle, but the long-term legitimacy and financial stability of the bio hub initiative demands support from both internal and external significant actors and stakeholders. The external institutional work in turn demands a set of skills in the bio venture hub’s management team, including detailed scientific and regulatory expertise, communicative skills, and the charisma and story-telling capacities to convince and win over sceptics. The internal institutional work, in turn, demands an understanding of extant legal frameworks and fiscal policies, the ability to handle a series of practical and administrative routines (i.e. how to procure the chemicals used in the laboratory work or how to make substance libraries available), and to serve as a “match-maker” between the bio venture hub companies and the experts located at the hosting company.

The case study provides first-hand empirical data from an unique initiative in the pharmaceutical industry to create novel collaborative spaces where small-sized life science companies can take advantage of the mature firm’s expertise and stock of know-how, also benefitting the hosting company as new collaborations unfold and providing a detailed understanding of ongoing life science innovation projects. In this view, all agencies embedded in institutional field (i.e. what has been addressed as “institutional work” – the active work to create, maintain, or disrupt institutions) both to some extent destabilize existing practise and create new practices better aligned with new conditions and relations between relevant and mutually dependent organizations. The empirical study supports the need for incorporating the concept of agency in institutional theory and thus contributes to the literature on institutional work by showing how one of the industries, the pharmaceutical industry, being strongly fortified by intellectual property rights (i.e. a variety of patents), inhibiting the free sharing of scientific and regulatory know-how and expertise, is in fact now being in the process of rethinking the “closed-doors” tradition of the industry. That is, the institutional work conducted in the bio venture hub is indicative of new ideas entering Big Pharma.

The objective of this study was to examine the trends in the specialty chemical industry that have led to the rising number of agile practices and “virtual” organizations. The current state of the industry is also presented. An agile company can be defined as an enterprise that is capable of operating profitably in a competitive environment of continually, and unpredictably, changing customer opportunities. The five most prevalent agile practices in the specialty chemical industry can be summarized as, entering niche markets through custom chemicals manufacturing, improving relationships with suppliers (also, a lean manufacturing practice), formation of strategic partnerships, adaptation of advanced technology/research, and the emergence of “virtual” firms. Examples and case studies from other authors are cited and commented upon with respect to these five agile practices. In addition, actual results from the study of a small specialty chemical firm have been used to ascertain the level of agility that this firm utilizes. A comparison of this manufacturing company's practices with the case studies from the literature reveals how a small‐intermediate size manufacturer can properly implement many agile manufacturing practices and position itself for growth and competitiveness in its category and class.

Based on strategic management approaches, this paper aims to develop a systemic and dynamic model of knowledge creation. The boundaries of the environment are changing in terms of contract research, in‐licensing, out‐licensing where strategic intent also changes and gets redefined.

This is an exploratory study using available theories and evidences of companies fanning in different directions in the form of novel types of alliances. Suitable propositions are developed for further study.

The study concludes that organisations will have to reach for tacit knowledge and enhance the knowledge stock by constantly absorbing and assimilating new ideas and research findings.

More study in depth and across a variety of companies is required to validate the findings particularly comparing the research and development (R&D) paths of organisations located in multiple countries. Not merely big firms, even small to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) can be the subject of further study.

Previous studies concentrated on conservation, accumulation and recycling of knowledge without considering the absorption capacity of firms. This study takes for its heart the absorptive capacity as the ingredient of dynamic learning opportunities. Both for micro and macro initiatives, a joint interaction is necessary for knowledge to germinate and grow. Organisational learning is also a part of this process. Intellectual property in specialised research fields therefore must be created and defended.

Discusses the extent to which American, European and Japanese pharmaceutical multinational enterprises (MNE) with subsidiaries in the Republic of Ireland have localised specific forms of R&D and contributed to technology transfer. Reports on a survey in which chief executive officers of Irish‐based MNE subsidiaries responded to mailed questionnaires. The reasons for corporate management to choose such operational strategic thrusts at business level have been highlighted with a view to focus on the degree to which Ireland is developing its pharmaceutical industrial base, as a result of attracting export‐led global pharmaceutical multinationals.

The role of intuition receives little attention in the literature on organizational creativity. This paper describes a study of the role of intuition and its implications for organizational creativity within pharmaceutical research. The study applies French philosopher Bergson's philosophy of intuition. The study is based on a series of interviews with employees in pre‐clinical research (discovery) in a major pharmaceutical company; in this context, creativity is defined as an organization's ability to bring forth a new candidate drug in the gastrointestinal and cardiovascular therapy areas. This paper concludes that intuition is a resource that facilitates new drug development. Pharmaceutical researchers perceive the roles of intuition and creativity as intertwined in ground‐breaking innovations. However intuition is a controversial phenomenon in the organization because it opposes reductionistic and analytical forms of thinking, which are highly prized in new drug development. Bergson's philosophy may form a fruitful foundation from which intuition and its relevance for organizational creativity can be exploited.