Innovation in the Pharmaceutical Industry: The Process of Drug Discovery and Development

M. Ding et al. (eds.), Innovation and Marketing in the Pharmaceutical Industry, International Series in Quantitative Marketing 20, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-7801-0_2, © Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014 Abstract Continuous innovation is one of the pharmaceutical industry’s most defi ning characteristics. New medications can be crucial for maintaining the quality of human life, and may even affect its duration. The sales potential is staggering: the global pharmaceutical market is expected to reach $1.1 trillion by 2015. The pressure to succeed is tremendous. Yet, pharmaceutical innovation is hardly an orderly, predictable process. It follows a technology-push model dependent on a meandering path of scientifi c breakthroughs with uneven timing and hard to foresee outcomes. Technological competency, decades of rigorous research, and profound understanding of unmet customer needs, while necessary, may prove insuffi cient for market success as the critical decision for commercialization remains outside the fi rm. Drug innovation as a business process requires savvy strategic, organizational, and managerial decisions. It is already enjoying intensive research coverage, giving rise to abundant but relatively dispersed knowledge of the mechanisms driving drug discovery and development. In this chapter, we present a comprehensive overview of the process of drug innovation from a business and academic perspective. We discuss the evolving organizational forms and models for collaboration, summarize signifi cant empirical regularities, and highlight differences in market positions related to fi rms’ strategic orientation, innovation emphasis, attitudes to risk, and specialized resources. As a guide to future research, critical drivers and modes for drug innovation are systematized in a unifying framework of characteristics and process decisions, and multiple areas in need of further scrutiny, analysis, and optimization are suggested. Because of its rich potential and high signifi cance, research on drug innovation seems poised to gain increasing momentum in the years to come. Chapter 2 Innovation in the Pharmaceutical Industry: The Process of Drug Discovery and Development