Monsanto's March into Biotechnology (A)

Gary P. Pisano

Case | HBS Case Collection | January 1990 (Revised October 1993)

Monsanto's March into Biotechnology (A)

Abstract

Very early in the history of biotechnology (about 1979), Monsanto made a major commitment to move into this field. This case recounts the history from the point of view of the eminent scientist hired to head up corporate R&D. He took Monsanto from a very traditional agricultural chemicals technology base to one of the world's finest biotechnology centers and oversaw the purchase of Searle Pharmaceuticals. Raises a number of issues: How can a company move into a totally new technology? What are the advantages and disadvantages of sourcing technology from small firms and universities? How should research be organized? Emphasizes the very long-term view that Monsanto took in justifying their huge investment.

Keywords: History; Transition; Biotechnology Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry;

Format: Print

17 pages

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Citation:

Pisano, Gary P. "Monsanto's March into Biotechnology (A)." Harvard Business School Case 690-009, January 1990. (Revised October 1993.)

Working Paper | 2019

Long-Term Firm Growth: An Empirical Analysis of US Manufacturers 1959-2015

Giovanni Dosi, Marco Grazzi, Daniele Moschella, Gary P. Pisano and Federico Tamagni

Firm growth is an essential feature of market economies, shaping together macroeconomic performance and the evolution of industry structures. As a po-tential indicator of organizational “ﬁtness” within a competitive environment, ﬁrm growth is also a central concern to both the practice and theory of business strategy. Despite both its theoretical and practical importance, though, growth remains a poorly understood property of ﬁrms. While previous studies have documented the highly skewed nature of ﬁrm growth rates, we know far less about the persistence of growth rates over long-periods of time. For instance, do “fast growers” tend to maintain their relative growth rates advantages over long-periods or is superior growth a transitory phenomenon? Is, as predicted by evolutionary and capability based theories of the ﬁrm, the process of ﬁrm growth path-dependent or is it more akin to a random walk? The answers to these questions are central to building a robust theory of ﬁrm growth. This paper attempts to address this gap in our empirical knowledge of ﬁrm growth using a dataset that spans 50 years, which al-lows the abandonment of the assumption, common to all incumbent studies, that the stochastic paths of all ﬁrms stem from the same generating process. These exploratory results indicate that growth rate persistence is there and my be even substantial for some ﬁrms, but it is rare. We also study the links between the micro-properties of ﬁrm growth within sectors and the patterns of aggregate growth of these same sectors. Indeed, we ﬁnd circumstantial but widespread evidence that heterogeneity across ﬁrms correlates with industry dynamism.

Citation:

Dosi, Giovanni, Marco Grazzi, Daniele Moschella, Gary P. Pisano, and Federico Tamagni. "Long-Term Firm Growth: An Empirical Analysis of US Manufacturers 1959-2015." Working Paper, May 2019. View Details

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