باقی ماندن نوآورانه بدون به خطر انداختن ثبات: یک تجزیه و تحلیل استراتژی در صنعت داروسازی ژاپن که شرکت را قادرمی سازد تا بر اینرسی ناشی از موفقیت نفوذ بازار در توسعه محصولات جدید غلبه کند

Firms competing in increasingly technologically sophisticated markets have encountered a new set of challenges. Often as a firm becomes successful in technology development, inertia enters into the process. Successful co-evolution of technology often stimulates this inertia as a preference to just refine and market the same product, which ensures stability for the firm. Unfortunately, this tendency stifles innovation. We can observe this phenomenon by analyzing product changes in the pharmaceutical industry, which is a typical high intensive R&D industry. As an inevitable result of too much strengthening of a specific core field, one failure often observed is the inability to quickly move into complementary or different product areas. One survival solution is co-evolution of technology products developed in such a way that external and internal firm circumstances that affect the customer are constantly considered. The question this analysis addresses is, “How do we construct an interface between core and new products in order to simultaneously maximize core competence and yet at the same time remain flexible?” Institutional elasticity is one mechanism for creating such a trade-off between stability and ongoing new product development. Flexibility at the edge of product development could keep a firm from falling into a dangerous equilibrium position, thereby enabling it to remain innovative without sacrificing stability

Firms competing in increasingly sophisticated technology markets have encountered a new set of challenges. Responding to customer needs is crucial for survival, while for society as a whole, there are requirements for expanding the reach of technological benefits to larger numbers of individuals. At the firm level, maximizing customer satisfaction by providing an efficient internal manufacturing system and simultaneously securing flexibility corresponding to dynamic and rapid change have become important aspects of any competitive survival strategy. It is well known that incremental product innovation is well managed by cooperation between marketing knowledge and technology knowledge (Allen, 1966, von Hippel, 1979, von Hippel, 1980, von Hippel, 1982, von Hippel, 1988, Clerk and Fujimoto, 1991, Ohno, 1988, Fujimoto, 1993 and von Hippel et al., 1999). The innovator has the dilemma of constantly changing and consequently often fails to survive (Bower and Christensen, 1995 and Christensen, 1997). Firms very often fail to seize opportunities to master the dynamics of innovation in the face of technological change (Utterback, 1994). Knowledge creation theorists suggest that organizations that can control the chaos between rapid technology and market change recognized will survive (Nonaka, 1991, Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995, Nonaka et al., 1997 and von Krogh et al., 2000). To maintain a core competence, it is important to bring both technical and managerial branches of an organization together to ensure that future changes are appropriately made. Recent study has in particular recognized the importance of the search for management-driven marketing opportunities (Hamel, 2000). The competitive innovator typically succeeds in bringing new technologies to market, but this ultimately leads to failure as firm inertia encourages the innovator to over depend on technology already in place instead of exploring new technology opportunities. As an inevitable result of too much strengthening of a specific core field, one failure often observed is an inability to quickly move into complementary or different product areas. One survival solution is co-evolution of technology products developed in such a way that external and internal firm circumstances affecting the customer are constantly considered. The question this analysis addresses is, “How do we construct an interface between core and new products in order to simultaneously maximize core competence and yet at the same time remain flexible?” Institutional elasticity is one mechanism for creating such a trade-off between stability and ongoing new product development. Intriguing in-depth recent case studies on Sears Roebuck, Monsanto, Royal Dutch Shell, the US Army, British Petroleum, Hewlett Packard and Sun Microsystems (Pascale et al., 2000), demonstrate that in business, as in nature, there are no permanent winners. There are just firms that either react to change and evolve, or those that get left behind and become extinct. Equilibrium is a very dangerous position for survival, and innovation usually takes place on the edge of chaos. Self-organization and emergence occur naturally. Organizations are generally more turbulent than directed. Monsanto has successfully remained on the edge of the new business front managing the trade-offs in technology co-evolution. However, although it has leading core competence for technology in the bio- and life-industry, it could not move beyond its core products and merged with Pharmacia Upjohn in 2000 due to a systemic disconnect between management, technology and market signals. This clearly shows that core competence for technology is not sufficient for successive survival. At the society level, serving the needs of those in society who do not have full access to the market is an equally important goal. What are the aspects, in the notion of co-evolution of technology, which can affect the lives of those who cannot yet participate in the market? Can co-evolution of technology increase accessibility for the treatment of diseases common to the poor? Can it increase the availability of public goods such as a clean environment or wider public health coverage? Is it possible for this market-based mechanism to provide greater access to the basic amenities of life? This article attempts to address these possibilities, which confront firms and society in the 21st century. Section 2 outlines the successful co-evolution of technology in a high intensity R&D industry. Section 3 examines the concept of overcoming the inertia of having a successful product in the marketplace and yet remaining flexible. Section 4 evaluates strategic alliance as a key mechanism of technology spillover which continuously stimulates flexible technology development and Section 5 briefly summarizes concluding remarks and implications.

As shown by the above analysis of the behavior of pharmaceutical firms, even if new product development can be carried out in a technology-push manner, new products are often not successfully developed. A lack of appropriate marketing knowledge is sometimes a failure factor for successful NPD even if a new product creates a new market. This contributes to the focus of management in terms of R&D capability, which must maintain momentum in the marketplace while developing new products. This investigation shows that in Japan's pharmaceutical industry, alliance products are not only fully utilized for maintaining and nourishing core fields. Rather, these products are abandoned within a short time frame. Looking at the ambiguity and uncertainty of change in customer preferences, it could be thought that alliance products would be used effectively. However, because of extremely tough competition and the high risk of R&D investment, alliance products are used only as a linkage between in-house products. In the pharmaceutical industry, enormously high R&D investment requires a rigid structure in which technological competence must be harmonized and synergized with marketing competence for successful technology co-evolution to take place. Although there is a rigid structure in which marketing core competence is tied to technological core competence, this system works as a strong support for enforcing the original core field of individual firms. Therefore, it potentially creates inertia which keeps a firm from moving beyond its past. This rigid structure also accelerates the early abandonment of alliance products and tends to ensure over-investment in a core field of each firm. In addition, because of hyper-competition resulting in extremely high R&D intensity, the environment surrounding the pharmaceutical industry is such that the firm that remains competitive must be in a highly ‘qualified’ position. To maintain a qualified position in the market, technological core competence and marketing core competence have been rigidly united for NPD. This structure tends to cause an excess of R&D investment and is a structural cause of inertia in R&D as illustrated in Fig. 8. In this cycle, a new opportunity has stolen the position of a market winner because of rapid product change brought about because of rapid technological innovation.The condition that produces the ability to overcome this cycle is the case in which a new product creates a new market by differentiating itself from an existing product. When a new product emerges from the interface between market and technology, a different R&D structure should be undertaken. For managing this interface between market and technology, a loosely unified assessment system is essential, and it must not be isolated such as in the case of an incubator system. However, the assessment system for differentiated products should be somewhat separate from the ongoing primary product structure in order to simultaneously maximize core competence but enable flexibility. In summary, institutional elasticity addresses the need to balance trade-offs in the co-evolution of technology. Instead of firms getting stuck at equilibrium and ultimately losing their position, they can use strategic alliances to avoid inertia and continue to create completely new innovations yet at the same time maintain a competitive market position.