Learning from Collaboration: Knowledge and Networks in the Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical Industries

The biotechnology and pharmaceutical fields are rife with a wide range of collaborative relationships intended to access knowledge, skills, and resources that cannot be produced by organizations internally in a timely fashion. As more firms rely on external relationships for knowledge, the ability to process, transfer, and transmit knowledge gained in one context to other activities becomes critical. This article examines the capability for learning both how and what to learn in the context of these inter-organizational relations, and it surveys various practices developed by companies for accessing and distributing knowledge. The key challenge in innovation-intensive fields is to develop organizational routines for learning that are robust, flexible, and durable.