Internationalising to create Firm Specific Advantages: Leapfrogging strategies of U.S. Pharmaceutical firms in the 1930s and 1940s & Indian Pharmaceutical firms in the 1990s and 2000s

Suma Athreye () and Andrew Christopher Godley ()

No 51, UNU-MERIT Working Paper Series from United Nations University, Maastricht Economic and social Research and training centre on Innovation and Technology

Abstract: Internationalisation is a useful strategy to gain firm specific advantages during periods of technological discontinuity. The pharmaceutical industry offers us two such episodes as examples: when the antibiotics revolution was beginning and when the possibilities of genetic routes to new drug discovery were realised. This paper compares the strategies adopted by laggard U.S. firms scrambling to gain capabilities in antibiotics, and Indian firms equally eager to acquire positions in new biotechnology based drugs and shows that both groups used internationalisation strategies to gain technological advantages and build up their firm specific advantages.

Keywords: Technological leapfrogging; Internationalisation Strategies; Indian Pharmaceutical industry; Antibiotics revolution; US Pharmaceuticals (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F23 L22 L25 L65 N80 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-cse, nep-cwa and nep-his
Date: 2008
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