DOI: 10.1051/ejess:2000119
European Journal of Economic and Social Systems 14
N
3 (2000) pp. 229-270
Innovation networks and competitive coalitions
in the pharmaceutical industry: The emergence
and structures of a new industrial organization
Marc-Hubert Depret1 - Abdelillah Hamdouch2
1IFRESI-CLERSE, Université de Lille I, Faculté des Sciences Économiques et Sociales,
2 rue des Canonniers, 59800 Lille, France
2CLERSE, Faculté des Sciences Économiques et Sociales, Université de Lille I,
et MATISSE-CRIFES, Université de Paris I, Maison des Sciences Économiques, 106-112 boulevard de
l'Hôpital, 75647 Paris Cedex 13, France
Abstract:
Today, the pharmaceutical industry is
subjected to wide-scale technological, institutional and
economic changes that bring about a radical reconfiguration of
the structural parameters and strategic variables of competition.
While innovation processes are being increasingly structured around
a new paradigm and markets are being both globalized and fragmented,
firms are attempting to adapt, above all by refocusing their businesses
and by redefining all the links in their value chain. However, the most
significant changes in their strategy lie in the conception of their
horizontal and vertical relations. The competitive game has a tendency
to being extended to phases upstream market competition, to be reconfigured
in the form of intra and inter-coalitions and networks strategic games, and
to quickly evolve along with technological innovations, the opening of new
market "frontiers'' and successive concentration operations. The pharmaceutical
industry thus constitutes a sort of life-size "laboratory'' for an in-depth
analysis of the effects of radical institutional and technological changes
on the new shapes of competitive structuring within markets undergoing
rapid globalization, and of the "spontaneous'' emergence of a new form of
industrial organization.
Keywords:
New biotechnology applied to health, institutional and technological changes,
competitive coalitions, globalization, pharmaceutical industry, innovation, interfirm networks
Correspondence and reprints: Marc-Hubert Depret
E-mail: Marc-hubert.Depret@ifresi.univ-lille1.fr
Copyright EDP Sciences 2000
