Internationalisation of pharmaceutical R&D: how globalised are Europe's largest multinational companies?

摘要

The internationalisation of corporate research is an issue with a large impact on strategic decision-making within the research-intensive pharmaceutical industry. However, sector-wide comparative statistics on the whereabouts of corporate research activities and the geographic distribution of their research partners is scarce. This paper describes the international research profiles of Europe's top 10 largest multinational pharmaceutical companies based on publication counts and author address information drawn from the thousands of pharmaceutical research articles published in 2005-2006. The results provide relevant aggregate-level background intelligence for strategic analysis of the industry's internationalisation processes and research cooperation patterns. The overall statistics indicate that international research activity of European industry is significantly more oriented towards the US science base than vice versa. Company-level statistical data on the research cooperation involving each company's central research centres based in country of corporate headquarters, reveal quite distinctive geographical characteristics alongside differential preferences for in-house or external research partners.