The Evolution of Science-Based Business: Innovating How We Innovate

Gary P. Pisano

Article | Industrial and Corporate Change

The Evolution of Science-Based Business: Innovating How We Innovate

Abstract

Science has long been connected to innovation and to business. As early as the late 19th century, chemical companies, realizing the commercial potential of science, created the first industrial research laboratories. During much of the 20th century, large-scale business enterprises like DuPont, GE, Westinghouse, IBM, Kodak, Xerox (PARC), and AT&T (Bell Laboratories) created in-house labs capable of first-rate basic scientific research. In recent decades, however, the connection between science and business has begun to change in important ways. While the corporate lab declined, new "science-based businesses" in sectors like biotech, nanotech, and energy emerged. Universities also became active players in the commercialization of science. In short, science has become a business. This essay examines the institutional and organizational challenges created by this convergence of science and business through a Chandlerian lens. It highlights three fundamental challenges of science-based businesses: 1) managing and rewarding long-term risk, 2) integrating across technical disciplines, and 3) learning. Whereas these challenges were once managed inside the boundaries of corporate R&D labs—under the auspices of Chandler's visible hand—today the invisible hand of markets increasingly governs them. An assessment of this form of governance against the requirements of science-based businesses suggests a gap and a need for organizational innovation.

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Governance; Innovation and Management; Risk Management; Research and Development; Science-Based Business; Commercialization;

Format: Print

18 pages

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Pisano, Gary P. "The Evolution of Science-Based Business: Innovating How We Innovate." Special Issue on Management Innovation—Essays in the Spirit of Alfred D. Chandler. Industrial and Corporate Change 19, no. 2 (April 2010): 465–482.

For more than two decades, scientific advances have been driving profound changes in drug discovery and the drug industry itself. This case provides an overview and description of these technical and scientific advances. Written for the nonscientific reader, it may be used as companion reading for other case materials that require basic knowledge of the tools, techniques, and approaches used in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries.

Article | Industrial and Corporate Change | April 2020

Long-term Firm Growth: An Empirical Analysis of U.S. 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 potential 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 fat-tailed nature of firm growth rates, we know far less about the patterns 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 article attempts to address this gap in our empirical knowledge of firm growth using a dataset that spans 50 years, which allows 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 may 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.

Keywords: firm growth; Organizations; Growth and Development; Theory; Analysis; Production; Data and Data Sets;

Citation:

Dosi, Giovanni, Marco Grazzi, Daniele Moschella, Gary P. Pisano, and Federico Tamagni. "Long-term Firm Growth: An Empirical Analysis of U.S. Manufacturers 1959–2015." Industrial and Corporate Change 29, no. 2 (April 2020): 309–332. View Details

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The Evolution of Science-Based Business: Innovating How We Innovate

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