Challenges in commercializing stem cells and regenerative medicine technologies: A case study on dedicated biotech firms in Japan

This research has focused on studying the central role that patents, strategic alliances and funding play in commercializing stem cells or regenerative medicine-related dedicated biotech firms in Japan. The paper bases its conceptual stand in the role of resource competencies as an object of commercializing and strategizing knowledge in dedicated biotech firms. It does this by postulating its theoretical foundations in the resource-based view and the competence-based theories on analyzing the challenges faced by these knowledge-based firms. Using an integrated set of data retrieved from the Japanese Biotech Database or JaBit, we conducted a case study of six dedicated biotech firms (DBFs), which consist of three stem cells and regenerative medicine businesses and three conventional drug discovery businesses. Using descriptive statistical analysis, our results indicate that the former type of DBFs have managed to perform better in terms of the enterprise value and the number of employees but not for the firm size indicated by number of projects in pipeline and their net amount of assets. Furthermore, as an underlying statistics for innovation productivity, the stem cells and regenerative medicine DBFs have shown a positive trend in terms of average number of patent production per scientists who have close ties with larger firms. The stem cells and regenerative medicine DBFs also have more experienced management group with a variety of industry experiences. Basing on these findings, we conclude that the data-driven empirical approach contributes to the field of resource- and competence-based strategy building and offers a new insight to the biotech industry in Japan.