Organizational learning in cooperative alliances: Some case studies in biotechnology

Dedicated biotechnology firms (DBFs) have played an important role in commercializing biotechnology. They emerged first in the US and, after a 5-year time lag, they also appeared in Europe. Faced with long and costly product lead times, DBFs raised money by entering into research contracts, mainly with large chemical and pharmaceutical companies. These cooperative research alliances have not vanished as biotechnology has matured and are more in evidence today than they were in the early days of the commercialization of biotechnology. This paper investigates how and why large and small companies enter research collaborations, what they learn from working together, and the effects on European competitiveness.