Industrial research institutionalization

There are two basic forms for the establishment or implementation of research in a company personnel-oriented and institutionalized. If the research process depends to a large extent on the performance of an individual it is here designated as personnel-oriented. This individual might be an independent inventor or an inventor employed by the firm. Only with the advent of self-sufficient company research laboratories, a research infrastructure, and the position of research director does an institutionalized industrial research process emerge. 

While Nicolas Leblanc and his washing soda helped start the bulk chemical industry, Perkin s mauve spawned the world s dye and pharmaceutical drug industries. His synthetic dye was the first in a cascade of colors that institutionalized scientific research, professionalized chemists, changed the economies of vast regions, and helped make turn-of-the-century Germany the world s leading industrial power. Perkin was an ado-... 

Prussia (in northern Germany) was industrializing and urbanizing so quickly that onlookers called it Europe s Wild West. Building on synthetic alizarin red, Germany institutionalized chemical research. Perkin and other English inventors had established companies to exploit a product, but German firms exploited the research process itself. 

Product development public-private partnerships (p-PPPs) are collaborative organizations between non-profit and for-profit organizations. They are institutionalized with public intervention and/or funding because markets are perceived as unable to adequately connect relevant resources and capabilities between science and industry in basic research. Clearly, diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis, and others that are even less well known are rampant in developing countries but are far less of a threat in most developed countries (Wheeler and Berkley 2001 Kaplan and Laing 2004). There is, therefore, little or no economic incentive to develop pharmaceutical products for these diseases (Biel 2001 Milne, Kaitin, and Ronchi 2004 Kaplan and Laing 2004). The industry s lack of enthusiasm is also a result of distribution challenges in countries with poor infrastructures and lack of awareness about these diseases in more developed countries, liability considerations, inadequate science base, and underestimation of the disease burden. Product PPPs have been developed to address... 

An example for an institutionalized body to fulfil at least partially tasks and functions of tolerability and acceptability assessment and risk appraisal on the national level is the UK Chemical Stakeholder Forum. The forum consists of stakeholders from different associations such as chemical industry, business, environment, consumer protection as well as research institutes. They gather different perceptions and concerns, evaluate and prioritize different chemicals and propose risk management strategies in order to deliberate the government. 

Government needs to be better educated in the realities of the marketplace but even in civilian research and development, its actions cannot be guided solely by them. Nor is the reconciliation of government and industry interests simply a matter of consulting one another. If the previous hypotheses are correct, what is required is the institutionalization of private sector participation in public policy decisions and management. This proposition is radically at odds with the more extreme versions of the "hands off" philosophy of some executives in industry and the "arm s length" philosophy of some officials, in government. 

The chemical industry took part in these developments and as it did so its research and development departments intensified their contacts with universities and other research institutes. The close connection of the Farbenfabriken Bayer and Carl Duisberg with the University of Berlin and with Emil Fischer is only one example of this phenomenon. Part of this change was the institutionalization of academic and industrial connections. Several societies were founded to defend and further the interests of managers, their employees, the teaching and research professors, their assistants and students. 

To clarify these relationships, I would like to borrow a model from systems theory. At a time when there existed hardly any institutionalized connections between the social subsystems of chemical industry, chemical research, and the state/military, or even a common "language" that would make the needs and goals of any one subsystem intelligible to the others, scientists acted as mediators translating the "language" of industry so that civil and military authorities could understand, and vice versa. It turned out to be scientists, and not least chemists, who generally first identified problems of military importance, then offered possible solutions, and provided means of communication between the military and industry. 

The results of this study call into question the exceptional status of the German pharmaceutical industry. In fact, only a single company, Bayer, had already fully institutionalized its research structure before World War I. Not until the 1920 s did all the other firms catch up with this development. This was the case not only in Germany, but throughout the world. Thus it may be surmised that the international leadership role of the German pharmaceutical industry before World War I did not reflect internal research structures. Rather, it was based on a phenomenon of the scientific system, namely the precursor role of German industry in the development of strong lines of communication between enterprises and universities. 

---