Pharmaceuticals analyzed through the lens of a sectoral innovation system

Abstract

Introduction This chapter analyzes the pharmaceutical industry through the lens of a sectoral system of innovation. Intuitively, the pharmaceutical industry quite naturally lends itself to be analyzed as an SSI or as a network (see Galambos and Sewell, 1995; Chandler, 1990; Gambardella, Orsenigo and Pammolli, 2000; and McKelvey and Orsenigo, 2002). However, at the same time and precisely given the intuitive appeal of the notion of “system” and/or “network” for this industry, taking this approach forces the researcher to try to make this notion more precise and compelling and – above all – to clarify why and in what sense a “sectoral innovation system” approach is useful. This constitutes the general aim of this chapter. Generically, the pharmaceutical industry can easily be considered as a system or a network because innovative activities involve, directly or indirectly, a large variety of actors, including: (different types of) firms; other research organizations, such as universities and other research centers; financial institutions; regulatory authorities; and consumers. An innovation system or network is composed of actors, relationships among actors and other contextual features that affect the decisions of actors' behavior and the development of knowledge and economic competencies (Edquist and McKelvey, 2000). All the actors mentioned above are part of an SSI, and they are different in many senses. They know different things; they have different rules of action; they have different incentives and motivations, which may often conflict.

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