Creative imitation in late industrializing countries: the case of biopharmaceutics in South Korea and India

ABSTRACT

Given that the patents of the first high cost and complex biopharmaceuticals have started to expire, biotechnology offers opportunities for developing countries to pursue an upgrading process by entering the sector as early imitators. In the case of biotechnology applied to the health sector, the characteristics of the innovation process and the specificity of the regulatory process for biopharmaceuticals raises new questions as to the learning path open to the developing countries that intend to build an industrial promotion strategy on the basis of early entry as imitators. Given those specific characteristics, it is worth asking how far creative imitation strategies could constitute an opportunity for late late industrializing countries to undertake rapid industrial upgrading processes.

KEYWORDS:

• Late industrialization
• biotechnology
• creative imitation
• industrial development

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 https://www.biocentury.com/reports/covid-19-clinical-trial-dashboard

2 In this paper, it is assumed that an upgrading process is, in fact, the materialization of a technological and production capability building process that allows countries to move towards the leading segments of the world economy, one that manifests itself in a global production structure hierarchy.

3 Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is a molecule localized in cells that contains the instructions an organism needs to develop, live and reproduce.

4 Other emerging country firms have also entered biosimilar markets. This is the case of Biosidus, MabXience (PharmADN), and Amega in Argentina, and Bionovis in Brazil. While Biosidus had been an early imitator that fell behind with respect to second-generation biosimilars, the other three Latin American firms have decided to catch up in the markets of more complex drugs (Gutman and Lavarello 2015).

5 Among them Cuba has also promoted the creation of government-owned pharmaceutical group BioCubaFarma, which centralizes commercial operations of 13 Cuban’s biotechnology laboratories Pan American Health Organization. Recommendations for the evaluation of similar biotherapeutic products (PBS). 2011 [homepage on the Internet]. [cited 2020 Apr 10]. Available from: https://www.paho.org/hq/index.

6 Samsung Report 2014.

7 This is the case of drugs whose active principles are Etanercept, Rituximab, Toziizumab, Palivizumab, Cetuximab, Trastuzumab, infliximab.

8 Kale (2019) develop this point focusing on the case studies of Dr. Reddy’s, Lupin, Cipla, and Biocon.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Agencia Nacional de Promoción Científica y Tecnológica: [Grant Number PICT 2012 2034].