Title: The chained evolution of science and technology in the pharmaceutical industry

Authors: Keiichiro Suenaga

Addresses: School of Political Science and Economics, Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan

Abstract: In recent years, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused severe physical and economic damage. How did we humans overcome these various crises and raise our economic and welfare standards? Technological advances such as the development of drugs have played a major role in these processes, but scientific advances such as clarifying the components of such drugs and the mechanisms of the human body have also had a major influence. This paper focuses on the pharmaceutical industry, which has experienced rapid growth in recent years and plays an important role in combating COVID-19. The characteristics of this paper are to endogenise the progress of science, which has made important contributions to economic development, to elucidate the chained evolution in which science and technology influence each other, and to clarify the evolution of the technological paradigm not only after its emergence but also until it emerges. In addition to understanding such evolution hierarchically and systematically, we also examine the organisational and theoretic characteristics of the emergence of technological paradigms.

Keywords: pharmaceutical industry; science and technology; knowledge progress; technological paradigm; innovations.

DOI: 10.1504/IJKL.2025.149856

International Journal of Knowledge and Learning, 2025 Vol.18 No.6, pp.600 - 620

Received: 01 Nov 2023
Accepted: 19 Feb 2025
Published online: 14 Nov 2025 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article