Thirty years ago it appeared as if biotech would not only revolutionize healthcare, but also radically improve the very process of R&D itself. This hasn't happened. Though some firms such as Amgen have created dramatic breakthroughs, the overall industry track record is poor—in aggregate, the sector has lost money during this period, new research shows.
What went wrong? Professor Gary Pisano provides answers in the new book Science Business: The Promise, the Reality, and the Future of Biotech, in which he argues that the very structure of the industry, what he terms its "anatomy," has created poor conditions for a science-based business to flower. "The sector has indiscriminately borrowed business models, organizational strategies, and approaches from other high-technology industries under the (false) premise that if it worked there it will work here," Pisano writes.
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