Interorganizational Networks, Financing and Commercialization of Life Science Innovations

Sammanfattning: The biotechnology industry is known for being highly networked and knowledge-intensive, as well as highly internationalized. Young firms within this sector are reliant on long term support from financiers, research collaborators and supply of highly skilled human capital. Further, contributing to the unique circumstances for entrepreneurship in this industry, it is not uncommon for firms to have no product or service, nor revenues, many years or even decades after its founding. Creating and maintaining relationships with their external environment therefore becomes essential for survival.This thesis aims to study how interorganizational networks form over time and to contribute to the understanding of how activities of entrepreneurial actors draw on and shape the networks in which they are embedded. To achieve this, 319 Swedish firms in the Swedish biotechnology industry were studied longitudinally over a period of ten years. Data was collected on their activities and relationships with actors in the entrepreneurial ecosystem surrounding biotechnology firms. A relational database of 7,745 interactions between 2,868 unique actors was constructed and analyzed using social network analysis, and additional statistical analysis was performed using panel data linear regression modeling.The findings suggest that there are significant differences in how structural characteristics of the different layers within interorganizational networks enable and constrain entrepreneurial firms in their relationships with external stakeholders. The entrepreneurial ecosystems are presented as supra-local phenomena, integrated in and through networks transcending traditional geographical confines of ecosystems. The result of this thesis underscores the importance of understanding the multi-layered and international dimensions of interorganizational networks, particularly in a knowledge-intensive and globally interconnected industry like biotechnology. An important outcome of this research is that it underscores the importance of financing for bringing biotechnology innovations to market.