ABSTRACT
The process industries have a tradition of global business operations, with multinational companies operating as far back as the early 20th century. What is changing this industry is technology, in particular, the nature of technological change. With the combination of regulatory burdens, intellectual property concerns, and complexity of chemical and biomedical science, development costs for new products in this sector have risen dramatically. In pharmaceuticals, in particular, the cost of developing a new drug and bringing it to market has increased tenfold in the past 5 years, and now amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars (including costs such as marketing). Given that expense, the uncertainty of research success, and the time required to obtain approval to distribute a drug, each manufacturer needs to have hundreds of drugs in development at any given time to maintain the minimum necessary flow of new drugs onto the marketplace. Similar situations are found in the chemicals and materials industries.
