Title: Commercialisation of bio-pharmaceutical therapies and risk management: the impact on the sustainability of markets for recombinant drugs

Authors: Rudiger Wink

Addresses: Hochschule fur Technik, Wirtschaft und Kultur HTWK Leipzig, Postfach 301166, 04251 Leipzig, Germany

Abstract: Due to its influence on changes of research paradigms and development of hitherto unknown applications, commercialisation of biotechnological knowledge causes new challenges for regulatory procedures in pharmaceutical markets. By affecting time and probability of successful commercialisation, private and public institutions systems of risk management also influence the structure of financing science-based biotechnological start-ups. Based on a theoretical approach, which integrates the effects of learning and knowledge path dependencies into traditional neoclassical principal–agency theory, the impact of risk assessment procedures in four different countries (USA, UK, Germany, and Japan) on the emergence and sustainability of markets for (radical) new biotechnological knowledge is compared.

Keywords: venture capital markets; principal–agent theory; risk management; absorptive capacity; network externalities; regulatory systems; technology commercialisation; recombinant drugs; biotechnology; pharmaceutical.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBT.2004.004809

International Journal of Biotechnology, 2004 Vol.6 No.2/3, pp.186 - 201

Published online: 07 Jul 2004 *

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