Looking for the Healing Innovation Process: An Explorative Study on the Critical Sucess Factors for Innovation Management in the Pharmaceutical Industry

Looking for the Healing Innovation Process: An Explorative Study on the Critical Sucess Factors for Innovation Management in the Pharmaceutical Industry

Das, V.L.

Verburg, R.M. (mentor)

Technology, Policy and Management

Economics of Technology and Innovation

Management of Technology

2014-02-02

The pharmaceutical industry has been spending an increasing amount of money on R&D over the years. However, fewer drugs have been approved by the FDA and the EMA recently. This lack in innovation performance is a problem which needs to be solved in order to continue finding medicines for cureless diseases. Innovation lies at the heart of the problem. It is for this reason that we need to understand more about the innovation management of the pharmaceutical industry. The scientific literature is scattered and a more general list of critical factors would help in improving the innovation performance of these companies. Therefore the main question of this thesis is defined as: “What are the internal critical success factors for innovation management in the pharmaceutical industry?” This thesis includes an explorative research by interviewing fifteen managers of drug developing companies in the Leiden Bio Science Park in the Netherlands. During these interviews the focus was put on five factors; knowledge processes, knowledge network, motivation, innovation performance and company characteristics. The results show that there is a sharp distinction between large pharmaceutical companies and Small and Medium Sized Biopharmaceutical/Biotechnology Enterprises (SMBEs). These differences are mostly found in the knowledge processes, the knowledge networks and in the motivation of research employees. Also, three R&D phases can be distinguished by looking at the same focus points. The results presented in this research come from a small dataset. In further research it is recommended to measure the same aspects on a larger scale confirming the findings of this research. Also innovation performance can then be measured more accurately and related to the found critical factors.

knowledge management
absorptive capacity
motivation
innovation performance
pharmaceutical industry
biotechnology
small and medium sized enterprises

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Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2014 Das, V.L.