Internationalization and technological leapfrogging in the pharmaceutical industry

Abstract

Internationalization is a useful strategy for gaining firm-specific technological advantages especially during periods of technological discontinuity as the pharmaceutical industry illustrates. The antibiotics revolution in the 1940s saw laggard US firms scrambling to gain capabilities in antibiotics. The possibilities of non-chemical routes to new drug discovery in the 1990s saw Indian generic drug manufacturers attempting to develop new drug discovery capabilities. This article compares the leapfrogging strategies adopted by US and Indian firms and shows that in both periods internationalization strategies were central to the technological strategies of both groups of firms.