North Atlantic Innovative Relations of Swiss Pharmaceuticals and the Proximities with Regional Biotech Arenas

Christian Zeller

Economic Geography, 2004, vol. 80, issue 1, 83-111

Abstract: Under the pressure of increased global competition and processes of concentration, the pharmaceutical giants are reorganizing their innovative capacities. Technology and research and development (R&D) play a key role in the competitive strategies of multinational pharmaceutical companies. This article analyzes the interrelation of the far-reaching but spatially selective international expansion of R&D and technology of a major Swiss pharmaceutical company and its anchoring in regional arenas of innovation. It combines this international technological expansion with a perspective on integrating spatial and social proximities. Multinational corporations (MNCs) tend to locate their R&D activities in regions that are characterized by a richness of knowledge. The structure of inter- and intrafirm networks is shaped by the geography of talent. The Swiss pharmaceutical giants made substantial efforts to anchor themselves in regional arenas of innovation, such as the San Francisco Bay Area, Boston, and San Diego. A case study of a pharmaceutical giant’s embedding in the biotech arena of San Diego reveals how oligopolistic rivals fight over privileged access to spatially concentrated bases of technology. MNCs attempt to create, complement, and substitute spatial proximity with other types of social proximities, internal as well as external to their own organizations. These efforts contribute to the generation of specific global-local interfaces in the processes of global scanning, transferring, and generating new pharmaceutical compounds and technologies.

Date: 2004
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (23)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/j.1944-8287.2004.tb00230.x (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:recgxx:v:80:y:2004:i:1:p:83-111

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/recg20

DOI: 10.1111/j.1944-8287.2004.tb00230.x

Access Statistics for this article

Economic Geography is currently edited by James Murphy

More articles in Economic Geography from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().