Shaping the Industrial Century: The Remarkable Story of the Evolution of the Modern Chemical and Pharmaceutical Industries

Hardcover
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Author: Alfred D. Chandler Jr.

ISBN-10: 067401720X

ISBN-13: 9780674017207

Category: Basic Materials Industries - History

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The dean of business historians continues his masterful chronicle of the transforming revolutions of the twentieth century begun in Inventing the Electronic Century.Alfred Chandler argues that only with consistent attention to research and development and an emphasis on long-term corporate strategies could firms remain successful over time. He details these processes for nearly every major chemical and pharmaceutical firm, demonstrating why some companies forged ahead while others failed. By the end of World War II, the chemical and pharmaceutical industries were transformed by the commercializing of new learning, the petrochemical and the antibiotic revolutions. But by the 1970s, chemical science was no longer providing the new learning necessary to commercialize more products, although new directions flourished in the pharmaceutical industries. In the 1980s, major drug companies, including Eli Lilly, Merck, and Schering Plough, commercialized the first biotechnology products, and as the twenty-first century began, the infrastructure of this biotechnology revolution was comparable to that of the second industrial revolution just before World War I and the information revolution of the 1960s. Shaping the Industrial Century is a major contribution to our understanding of the most dynamic industries of the modern era. Pharmacy in History One cannot read Shaping the Industrial Century without a sense that this is a work informed by decades of inquiry into business history and the rise and fall of companies and industries across the world. The author moves quite easily and confidently across a wide range of firms to summarize the key decisions that formed the fate of these businesses...Alfred D. Chandler, Jr.'s unique perspective helps to broaden the view of the history of the pharmaceutical industry, and thereby contributes notably to the history of pharmacy.— John P. Swann

1Differences, concepts, themes, and approach32Evolving paths of learning193The major American companies414The focused American companies835The European competitors1146The American competitors1447The American comopanies : the prescription path1778The American companies : the over-the-counter path2139The American and European competitors23010Commercializing biotechnology260