Innovation and industry structure in the biomedical industry: some preliminary results

Innovation in the pharmaceutical industry raises structural questions for the participants about their future roles. New technologies, and especially biotechnology, have made the industry structure more complex. Broadly speaking these technologies have been directed at two problems. One is increasing the range of drugs available to treat disease and the other is improving the efficiency of the drug discovery process - so called platform technologies. Some technologies have assisted in both areas. These new technologies have been largely developed by specialist start up companies rather than emerging from within the large pharmaceutical companies. Access to the new technologies by large pharmaceutical companies has been through alliances, service contracts and occasionally outright purchase. A handful of the new biotechnology companies has been successful in transforming themselves into large integrated companies, not dissimilar to the large pharmaceutical companies. Other companies have attempted to survive by developing different business models - contracting their research expertise to large pharma, forming alliances amongst themselves to acquire complementary technologies and offering their platform technologies on a fee for service basis. These new business models are yet to prove their viability