Economies of scale in experimentation: knowledge and technology in pharmaceutical R&D

This paper explores how changes in genetics, database, high-throughputscreening and bioinformatics technologies have allowed pharmaceuticalfirms to exploit economies of scale in experimentation. Traditionalcraft-based, sequential experimentation in chemistry and biologyhas been complemented by firstly, the automated, mass-productionanalysis of populations and secondly, by 'in silico' experimentationusing simulations and databases. The changes are analysed withina Chandlerian framework that highlights how increases in the'throughput' of R&D are dependent on organizational andmanagerial responses to systemic uncertainty.