The Management Department in the School of Business Presents:
“The Revolution Revisited: Clinical and Genetic Paradigms in Drug Discovery”
A Seminar Featuring:
Professor Michelle Gittelman
Associate Professor in the Management and Global Business Department at Rutgers Business School
Friday, February 28th
9:30 – 11:00am
School of Business, Room 302
For more information, or to RSVP, please contact Pamela Costa.
ABSTRACT
This paper compares genomics and clinical research as dominant search paradigms in biomedical research. I conceptualize clinical research and genomics as two distinct learning strategies that are rooted in different beliefs about the utility of causal models in drug discovery. These belief systems are embedded in institutional arrangements that shape the locus of discovery, key actors, scientific methods, materials, instrumentation and disciplines. The history of bio-medical research in the United States shows that these two paradigms emerged in two overlapping periods: the post-war period (1940s-1980s) was characterized by a clinically-driven, “bedside to bench” approach to discovery, based on studying human patients in clinical settings, e.g. hospitals, whereas the more recent period (1980s-present) has been characterized by a theory-driven “bench to bedside” approach in which genetic materials are the fundamental units of discovery and the locus of innovation is the laboratory. The history provides a contextual narrative to show how new research strategies emerge in the scientific landscape, and addresses the important questions of how change in scientific research paradigms shapes technological innovation in applied fields such as medicine.
BIOGRAPHY
Michelle Gittelman is an Associate Professor in the Management and Global Business Department at Rutgers Business School. Her research focuses on innovation in the biopharmaceutical industry. Her work has examined the influence of boundary-spanning scientists, scientific research strategies, links to universities, supporting institutions, and scientific culture in the development and performance of entrepreneurial biotechnology firms, both in the US and in Europe. Her current research examines the linkages between entrepreneurial biotechnology firms and global pharmaceutical firms in bringing new drugs to market. She is a leading expert on patents and their use as measures of innovation and knowledge flows. Her work has been published in Management Science, Organization Science, Research Policy, Review of Economics and Statistics, among others. Prior to joining Rutgers she was on the faculty at the Stern School of Business, New York University.
For more information, contact: Pamela Costa at pcosta@business.uconn.edu