学会誌

R&D activities for new medicine requires a huge cost and many years. Thus, small firms such as pharmaceutical startup usually have to finance their costs by forming an alliance with large pharmaceutical companies. In the recent few years, an inter-organizational cooperation structure, where a pharmaceutical startup is in charge of research, and a large pharmaceutical company is in charge of development after acquiring a pharmaceutical startup is becoming a main stream in the pharmaceutical industry. We call its main stream “dominant path”. Although discussing the dominant path of venture firms in the industry is important, discussing a different types of pharmaceutical startups, which does not follow the dominant path is also important. Therefore, in this paper, to discuss a pharmaceutical startup which is not following the dominant path in the industry, we use the concept of institutional strategy. As a result of our analysis, validity of the orphan drug strategy, which does not follow the dominant path was indicated. This result also suggests the existence of diverse paths of pharmaceutical startup other than the dominant path in the pharmaceutical industry.