Knowledge Recombination and Alliance Strategy in Science-based Businesses Year Two

Project Objectives:

1. To identify the best practices in knowledge recombination by comparing science-based multinational corporations and start-up firms.

2. To suggest refinements in alliance strategies for science-based multinational corporations and start-up firms.

3. To uncover processes and organizational structures to productively exploit the confluence of biotechnology and nanotechnology by MNCs.

Motivation for Research:

Successful organizations create new knowledge by recombining knowledge from multiple sources and disciplines (Grant, 1996; Kogut & Zander, 1992). Firms in science-based industries, such as biotechnology for example, create radical new products and processes based on scientific knowledge from multiple disciplines. Biotechnology firms, which originated in the 1980s (Zucker et al., 1998), are now incorporating nanotechnology to create new products and processes with the potential to transform an industry in search of new therapies (Sharp et al., 2011). For example, biotechnology based drugs, which until recently could not cross membrane barriers inside the human body, can now be designed on the nano-scale, leading to a new class of targeted drug delivery therapies, particularly in oncology. Recombining knowledge from diverse disciplines is inherently uncertain and requires large, consistent financial commitments over long periods of time.

Faculty Supervisor:

Elicia Maine

Student:

Partner:

Center for Drug Research and Development;CDRD Ventures Inc

Discipline:

Business

Sector:

Manufacturing

University:

Simon Fraser University

Program: