?Qué hace que un desarrollo científico tecnológico esté de moda y que otro deje de estarlo?: Estudio comparativo de dos proyectos en BioSidus

摘要

This article presents the comparative historical dynamics of two projects of BioSidus, an Argentinian bio-technologyfirm. These projects are, on the one hand, the Pharmaceutical Farm – a promising project which started in the 90sand raised high hopes within the company since it aimed at producing a number of proteins (and, therefore, biosimilardrugs) through transgenic animal farming. On the other hand, the second project under analysis is the GeneTherapy whereby an injected plasmid (a small DNA molecule) contributed to the re-construction of the internal wallsof the blood vessels of a patient (ischemia). The analysis is focused on three different perspectives on the decisionmaking process and how these perspectives can play a role along the trajectories of these projects. This articleponders over what conceptualizations on uncertainty, planning and decision making process constitute bettergrounds to manage uncertain and difficult-to-estimate R&D projects. This article also approaches the managerialpractice related to each perspective of the decision making process. The discussion of the paper is centred onuncertainty and risk and not on a variety of biases and criteria lying behind a specific decision. This study castsstrong doubt on the potential of some well-established decision making perspectives for the management of R&Dprojects.