The changing autarky pharmaceutical R&D process: causes and consequences of growing R&D collaboration in Japanese firms

This paper analyzes the changing R&D process at Japanese pharmaceutical companies, based on a questionnaire survey as well as structured interviews at large Japanese pharmaceutical companies. Japanese pharmaceutical companies have recently engaged in active R&D collaborations with other firms as well as universities. This paper identifies the factors underlying this trend, finding that all three factors – technological opportunity, the market conditions factor, and the innovation policy factor – are important. Our study also found that Japanese pharmaceutical companies typically use foreign rather than domestic technologies, despite considerable investment by the Japanese government in biotechnology projects in the public sector. This underscores the importance of devising a mechanism to facilitate the application of research results in the public sector to innovation at private firms.