OUTSOURCING, EXTERNAL COLLABORATION, AND INNOVATION AMONG U.S. FIRMS IN THE BIOPHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY

Abstract

This paper examines the outsourcing patterns of U.S. firms in the biopharmaceutical industry. Data from an exploratory survey of 86 companies suggest that the outsourcing of strategic activities such as applied research and formulary development has started to decline among firms of all sizes, though noncore activities such as manufacturing and clinical trials continue to be outsourced at an accelerating pace. The data suggest that there is no correlation between outsourcing and innovation performance, but that external collaboration supports innovation in positive ways. The results also show that medium-sized firms tend to manage their external partners more efficiently than smaller or larger firms – especially with respect to innovation-oriented collaboration. Medium-sized companies are found to be the most innovative in terms of patents and new product introductions, despite lower levels of research-intensity than those observed for smaller and larger firms. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the implications of the survey findings for technology analysis and strategic management.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 11 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.