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Managerial Knowledge and Learning
in Biotechnology Firms

presented by
Lucy A. Maillette

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MANAGERIAL KNOWLEDGE AND LEARNING IN BIOTECHNOLOGY FIRMS
By

Lucy Ann Maillette

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulﬁllment of the requirement
for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Education

2000

ABSTRACT
MANAGERIAL KNOWLEDGE AND LEARNING IN BIOTECHNOLOGY FIRMS
By

Lucy Ann Maillette

A number of studies have suggested that new, restructured, and global organizations may
require different managerial competencies than previously considered (Miles and Snow
1996; DuGay, Salaman, and Rees 1996; Bartlett and Ghoshal 1997; Spreitzer, McCall,
Mahoney 1997; Prahalad 1998; Gregersen, Morrison, Black 1998). Most biotechnology
ﬁrms are new organizations in an industry that has emerged within the past twenty-ﬁve
years. Since its beginning, the biotechnology industry has been marked by growth,
volatility, and competition for intellectual and scientiﬁc resources. The study focused on
the role of the biotechnology manager and the characteristics needed for effective
management of biotechnology ﬁrms. The research integrates concepts from management
and organization theory as well as learning theory. The research design included semi-
structured interviews with a number of scientists and managers and subsequent analysis
that followed the grounded theory approach of Strauss and Corbin (1998). Participants
were asked to discuss their understanding and interpretation of the managerial role, the
knowledge needs of biotechnology managers, and the relationship of management to the
science endeavor in their companies. The results of the study indicate that the
characteristics for successful management of biotechnology ﬁrms represent a range of
competencies in entrepreneurship, adaptability, timeliness, collaboration, and knowledge
management. This research provides a foundation for other studies on the contemporary

managerial role and contributes to current theories in management and education.

TO My Mother

A Continuing Inspiration

iii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In appreciation to the members of my dissertation committee: Dr. Robert Church,

Dr. John Wagner, Dr. Steve Kaagan, and particularly to my chair, Dr. Steven Weiland,
for their support and guidance. In recognition to the biotechnology managers, scientists,
and others who generously provided their perspectives on managerial knowledge and
learning in biotechnology ﬁrms. In thanks to Dr. Colm Lawler, who offered valuable
insights regarding life sciences management and to Joe Brocato for his friendship and
encouragement. And special acknowledgement to my partner, Ronald Marinch, for his

love and his dedication to the progress and process of the dissertation.

iv

Chapter

I.

II.

III.

IV.

Appendices
A.
B.

C.

Bibliography

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Managerial Knowledge and Learning
in Biotechnology F inns
Introduction to the Study

Managerial Knowledge and Learning:
What Do We Know?
A Review of the Literature

The Context of Managerial Knowledge and Learning:

A Framework and Methodology

The Construction and Interpretation of
Managerial Knowledge

The Results of the Study

Managerial Knowledge and Learning:

The Re-invention of Self
Conclusions and Considerations

Letter to Prospective Participants
Research Protocol

Consent Form

Page

11

40

58

109

125
126
127

128

Managerial Knowledge and Learning in Biotechnology Firms
Introduction to the Study

The relationship between management and science is critical to biotechnology
ﬁrms because the roles of the scientist and the manager together create the context for the
ﬁrm’s sustainability. Biotechnology ﬁrms are knowledge-intensive environments,
dependent on scientiﬁc knowledge, its promotion, and its products. The management of
scientiﬁc innovation, adaptation, and discovery is an essential aspect of the managerial
role in biotechnology ﬁrms; managers must take into account scientiﬁc processes and
outcomes in determining the strategic direction of the ﬁrm. Yet little is known about the
relationship between management and science in biotechnology ﬁrms or the managerial
knowledge and competencies needed to function effectively in these ﬁrms. This study
explores the role of management from the perspective of managers and scientists
involved in the creation and interpretation of the managerial experience in biotechnology
ﬁrms.

Biotechnology companies represent recent organizational entities based almost
entirely on scientiﬁc discovery and its transference to pharmaceutical, agricultural,
environmental and industrial uses. With the emergence of the biotechnology industry in
the mid-1970’s, the dynamic and competitive nature of research and development and the
scientiﬁc endeavor became intrinsically linked to management processes and the future
of the ﬁrm. The term “biotechnology” recognizes the technology that is aligned with
discovery and innovation in the life sciences. Biotechnology ﬁrms may be concerned
with human and animal genetics and pharmacology, agricultural production,

environmental and waste management, diagnostics, or the manufacture of scientiﬁc

equipment (Jones 1992; Prentis 1984; Rabinow 1996; Liebeskind, Olivers, Zucker,
Brewer 1998). Within the narrative, the terms “biotechnology” and “life sciences” are
used interchangeably in reference to the industry and the ﬁrms included in the study.

While biotechnology processes have long been used by mankind in the production
of bread, dairy products, and wine, a series of scientiﬁc discoveries in the 20th century
revolutionized the life sciences and created the momentum for biotechnology
applications. Biotechnology may be described simply as “the commercialization of cell
biology” (Grace, 1997, p. 2), using approaches from science, engineering, and
information technology. The discovery of DNA in the 1950’s provided scientists with an
understanding of the source for genetic information for all known life forms. In 1975,
scientists discovered that the structure of DNA could be recombined (recombinant DNA
or rDNA) or reengineered (i.e., genetic engineering) to produce new genetic entities. This
led to the discovery and manipulation of mononucleal antibodies, literally proteins that
provide cells with immune capabilities, and the high-volume, accelerated production of
microbes to assist in products for human, animal, and plant uses (Grace 1997; Prentis
1984). It is these processes that are the foundation of the work of biotechnology ﬁrms and
the managers and scientists within them.

The milieu of biotechnology was chosen as the framework for the study for
several reasons. Most biotechnology ﬁrms are new organizations in an industry that has
emerged within the past twenty-ﬁve years. It may be assumed that a great deal of
managerial learning takes placeas biotechnology ﬁrms are established and deveIOp.
Because many biotechnology ﬁrms are managed by former scientists, their insights

regarding the managerial role and its successful implementation in their environment

were created fairly recently and formed within the context of a very competitive industry.
Importantly, the managerial role was most likely learned as lived experiences on the job,
through actual practice without extensive formal training. It is possible that the
interpretation of the managerial role by managers and scientists in biotechnology ﬁrms
and its challenges and responsibilities may offer a valuable perspective on managerial
knowledge, learning, and competencies.

Organizational performance in research and development environments is highly
dependent upon scientiﬁc knowledge (Gerstenfeld 1970; Glasser 1982; Bergen 1990;
Tingstad 1991; Roussel, Sad, and Erickson 1991). Studies that discuss the roles of
managers and scientists have most often concentrated on the differences between the two
positions or discuss approaches to managing research and development personnel
(Danielson 1960; Evans 1969; Miller 1986; Tingstad 1991). Descriptions of scientists
have focused on the differences between scientists and other employees in organizations,
approaches to work, and personal attributes (Danielson 1960; Holland 1973; Pelz and
Andrews 1976, Latham and Mitchell 1976; McKelvey and Sekaran 1977). Studies of
managers have been delineated in terms of managerial activities and behavior (Simon
1957; McGregor 1960; Burns and Stalker 1961; Cyert and March 1963; Sayles 1964;
Mintzberg 1973; Drucker 1974; Levinson 1981).

Management and scientiﬁc personnel in biotechnology ﬁrms have also been
described as having separate functional roles, operational responsibilities, and social
cultures (Dubinskas 1985). How managers and scientists in biotechnology ﬁrms
understand the managerial role and its development in relationship to the scientiﬁc role

does not appear to have been studied by researchers. It is possible that in the relatively

small and entrepreneurial setting of many biotechnology ﬁrms, the scientist may be more
likely to observe the managerial consequences of scientiﬁc research than in larger, more
bureaucratic settings. Thus, the transition to manager may be more feasible in the
environment of a biotechnology ﬁrm, and, in fact, may be facilitated by the close
proximity and more convenient interchange that the life science ﬁrm may offer. Effective
managerial strategies that integrate managerial and scientiﬁc knowledge may combine
competitive and unique solutions toward innovation, funding, and interﬁrm alliances.
Since its beginning, the biotechnology industry has been marked by growth,
volatility and competition for intellectual and scientiﬁc resources. The biotechnology
industry in the United States grew from several companies in the mid-1970’s to more
than 1,000 in 1994 (Hamilton 1994) and continues to grow. Many companies were
established and managed by scientists or in conjunction with university sponsorship of
scientists and basic research. Although the biotechnology industry has produced many
discoveries that have made signiﬁcant scientiﬁc contributions, a number of biotech ﬁrms
have experienced problems with commercialization of their products and management
within their ﬁrms (Dutton 1995). Biotechnology stocks have experienced substantial
ﬂuctuations in value and this instability has created apprehension with potential
shareholders and Wall Street analysts (Morrison and Giovannetti 1999). The capacity of
biotechnology ﬁrms to remain commercially viable appears to be a serious managerial
issue for the scientists and managers within them. This may indicate a need for greater
managerial knowledge and learning or better understanding of managerial perspectives

across the ﬁrm.

What is a biotechnology ﬁrm? Various studies have distinguished the ﬁrm with a
singular interest in advancing biotechnology as a “dedicated biotechnology ﬁrm (DBF)”
(Dodgson 1991) and the “new biotechnology ﬁrm (N BF)” (Liebeskind, Oliver, Zucker,
Brewer 1998). While many pharmaceutical and agriculture-based corporations have
biotechnology subsidiaries and enclaves of scientists devoted to biotechnology
exploration, the DBF and NBF ventures continue to emerge and grow. The small and
incipient ﬁrms portrayed in this study have a number of characteristics in common, and
the following paragraph offers a composite portrait of a typical biotechnology ﬁrm as
experienced in this study.

The typical biotechnology ﬁrm is small and dedicated to one or two products. The
ﬁrm is new, often in operation for less than ﬁve years. Much effort is focused on research
and commercialization of products. Alliances with scientists at academic institutions,
with suppliers, and with larger ﬁrms such as pharmaceuticals or agriculture ﬁrms are
common. The environment is collegial and non-bureaucratic, often employing less than
ﬁfty employees. Most of the employees are engaged in the research and development
process, and managers frequently have a scientiﬁc background. The setting for the
biotechnology ﬁrm is often in an industrial park or a commercial area with other small
businesses. Ofﬁces occupy the front of the facility, with research areas and laboratories in
the back or offsite. There scientists study scientiﬁc processes and discover applications
for biotechnology concerns and, together with managers, merge scientiﬁc knowledge
with managerial knowledge for commercialization purposes.

Managerial knowledge as discussed in this study is the aggregate of the

experiences, skills, and information that provides managers with an understanding of how

to function effectively in the managerial role. Managerial learning involves the
development and sustenance of managerial knowledge. The study focused on the
characteristics and competencies advantageous for managerial work in biotechnology
ﬁrms as described by scientists and managers. The research attempted to determine the
organization of managerial knowledge in biotechnology ﬁrms, its development, and the
attributes for successful management in the competitive and urgent atmosphere of
scientiﬁc discovery and its commercialization. The inquiry included semi-structured
interviews with a number of scientists and managers and subsequent analysis which
followed the grounded theory approach of Strauss and Corbin (1998). Participants were
asked to discuss their understanding and interpretation of the managerial role, the
knowledge needs of biotechnology managers, and the relationship between the
managerial and scientiﬁc roles in their companies.

A number of studies have suggested that new, restructured, and global
organizational arrangements require different managerial qualities than previously
considered (Miles and Snow 1996; DuGay, Salaman, and Rees 1996; Bartlett and
Ghoshal 1997; Spreitzer, McCall, and Mahoney 1997; Prahalad 1998; Gregersen,
Morrison, and Black 1998). Other studies indicate that organizational capability is
grounded in the “core competencies” of the ﬁrm, the integration of knowledge within the
organization (Prahalad and Hamel 1990; Grant 1998) and the merging of tacit and
explicit knowledge (Polanyi 1966; Nonaka 1994). This emphasis on shared knowledge
enhancing ﬁrm capability would seem to be particularly important in knowledge-
intensive ﬁrms such as biotechnology companies. What may be learned from a study of

scientists and managers associated with biotechnology ﬁrms may provide insights for

organizations engaged in similar discontinuous environments. Also, it may be that the
managerial knowledge and competencies needed in biotechnology ﬁrms may be
transferable to other industries in which performance is linked to research and
development.

The scope of managerial knowledge and learning in biotechnology ﬁrms may
signiﬁcantly affect the viability of the company. While the role of the scientist and
scientiﬁc knowledge requires different professional competencies than the role of the
manager and managerial knowledge, the scientiﬁc approach and insights of the scientist
may prove useful to the management process. The development of managerial knowledge
may be important to scientists in biotechnology ﬁrms as they move from an academic,
basic research framework to a product-driven commercial model. It is possible that
disparity between scientiﬁc and management roles may have contributed to the volatility
of the biotechnology industry and that a greater diffusion of managerial knowledge in
these ﬁrms may better inform the scientiﬁc endeavor (Pollack 1998; Gibson 1986).

In order for scientists to develop managerial perspectives, new professional
competencies must be learned. There is reason to believe that the role and requirements
for the scientist in research and development organizations may be changing. Research
has indicated that corporate laboratories are increasingly interested in employing versatile
scientists who have an understanding of the management issues related to their research
(Turpin and Deville 1995; Gwynne 1997; Younger and Sandholtz 1998). Also, it is the
personal observation of the researcher that a number of scientists appear to be seeking out
management development experiences and education in the form of the MBA and non-

credit executive education, and considering management positions as viable career

options. Managerial knowledge is being sought out by scientiﬁc professionals who
previously did not aspire to that knowledge, and the parameters of managerial knowledge
are extending to encompass increasingly diverse groups of learners.

The diffusion of managerial knowledge and managerial learning is important to
this study in several ways. The role of the manager in biotechnology ﬁrms is essential for
integrating scientiﬁc outcomes with managerial strategy, processes, and priorities. Most
biotechnology ﬁrms are characterized by larger numbers of scientists than managers,
even though many biotechnology managers have scientiﬁc backgrounds. For these
former scientists and scientist-managers, the managerial role was a learned activity and
developmental task that became superimposed over the role of scientist. Rather than
exclusively viewing themselves as members of the scientiﬁc community, scientists who
have made the transition to management have had to reinterpret their roles and develop
managerial knowledge aligned with that of the business community. The development of
a knowledge base that was previously unknown to them allowed the managers in the
study to reinvent their professional lives and span the boundaries between the sciences
and the business of management.

The managerial learning of participants in the study resulted in the identiﬁcation
of characteristics for successful management in biotechnology ﬁrms. This managerial
knowledge represented a wide array of competencies that participants had learned
primarily through experience. What emerged from the initial coding of interviews and the
subsequent interpretation of the data was a series of related categories that managers
described as indicators of managerial success in biotechnology ﬁrms. The categories

included the theme of entrepreneurship, (the risk-taking nature of biotechnology

management, involving new product innovation, commitment, experimentation, and
familiarity with failure); adaptability (suggesting ﬂexibility and change to processes, the
organic nature of the life sciences, and the “many hats” that life science managers must
assume); timeliness, which focused on the time-related aspects of biotechnology issues
and the competitive urgency of their work; collaboration, characterized by collegial
informality and the interdisciplinary aspects of life sciences work; and the importance of
knowledge integration, involving the role of knowledge management, development, and
diffusion in biotechnology ﬁrms. The pervasive inﬂuence of science and scientiﬁc
knowledge formed a platform for ﬁrm strategy and direction, and should be considered
integral to understanding the managerial role within the life sciences industry.

The following chapters describe an understanding of managerial knowledge and
competencies as they are experienced and understood by scientists and managers in
biotechnology ﬁrms. The managerial learning took place through observation, learning
from failure and mistakes, through mentoring, experimental practices that borrowed from
previous scientiﬁc experience, and sharing knowledge with members of the scientiﬁc and
business communities. Chapter Two compares the results of the study with the literature
regarding managerial competencies, organizational theory and strategy, and theories of
learning. Chapter Three discusses the theoretical framework, methodology, and research
questions of the study. The study results by category and the construction of the
managerial role are the subject of Chapter Four. The ﬁnal chapter discusses the
conclusions of the study, its contributions, and directions for future research.

The relatively recent emergence of life science ﬁrms provided an opportunity to

study the managerial role and its development within a growing and competitive industry.

The industry is itself in a state of deﬁnition, change, and challenge, and this environment
may inﬂuence its management and contribute to new understandings of the managerial
role. The typically small employee base and low valuation of many life science ﬁrms
provided an accessible environment for examining the managerial role that may not have
been possible in a large corporate setting. The research process concentrated on the
concept of the role of the contemporary manager and in what ways the experiences and
knowledge of managers in life science ﬁrms may contribute to the theory and practice of
management. The study focused on the role of the manager, and the act of management,
as interpreted by the participants, and how their interpretation of the managerial role
manifests itself. At a time when the role of the manager, like that of the organization, is
undergoing enormous challenges and changes, there is a need to gain further

understanding of management and its evolving role in organizations.

10

Chapter Two
Managerial Knowledge and Learning: What DO We Know?
A Review of the Literature

The concepts of managerial knowledge and competencies have formed the
foundation of many texts and articles on management, and effective management
practices are implicit to theories of organizational strategy and success. A growing body
of literature focuses on management practices in regard to the changing nature of
organizations, emerging business forces, and knowledge management. Much of the
writing converges on organizational levels of competencies and learning, yet the
implication for the individual managerial role is obvious and merits further attention.
Managerial learning, knowledge, and competencies are presumed to be an integral aspect
of the ﬁrm that can signiﬁcantly inﬂuence and contribute to ﬁrm success.

Business organizations today bear increasingly little resemblance to the
corporations that began the industrial age. Corporations are moving away from the
assumptions and practices of the past in terms of global capabilities, multi-ﬁrm alliances,
dismantling of hierarchies, increasing diversity, and the pace of change. There is a
signiﬁcant amount of research devoted to new and emerging organizational forms. Yet
there much to be learned about the experiences of managers today: their perceptions of
the managerial experience, their understanding of effective practices, the knowledge that
they need to do their jobs, and how what they have learned has shaped their interpretation
of the managerial role.

One of the initial tasks of this study was to examine the literature for descriptions

of effective management practices today and projections for the future. There appears to

be little known regarding the construction of managerial knowledge and competencies,

11

which creates challenges for management theory and the education and professional
development of managers. There was very little written that addressed the contemporary
managerial role in its many aspects, although there were a number of articles that
appeared to address very speciﬁc areas of knowledge, such as strategies for diversity or
global management issues. It appeared that concepts and descriptions of the manager, the
managerial role, knowledge, and competencies were somewhat grounded in the past,
while expectations of the organization and the workforce have progressed and undergone
considerable changes.

One of the most recent changes is the emergence of new forms of organizations,
as exempliﬁed by technology-based ﬁrms. These include the growth of information
technology ﬁrms (software and Intemet-based companies) as well as the recent
proliferation of biotechnology ﬁrms that combine technologies from the life sciences,
engineering, and information science. The study of management as it occurs and is
understood within the structure of biotechnology ﬁrms brought together a number of
elements that appear central to organizational theory as it is unfolding today.
Biotechnology companies are knowledge-based entities, dependent on knowledge within
the ﬁrm as well as links to other communities of knowledge. The majority of
biotechnology employees are scientiﬁc and technical professionals: well-educated,
independent, and creative individuals. Most small biotechnology ﬁrms resemble the new
“cellular” and ﬂat organizations in their informal and non-hierarchical structures (Miles
and Snow 1996).

The management literature that focuses on managerial behavior and the study of

managerial competencies offers insights to the managerial role and aspects of managerial

12

knowledge in biotechnology ﬁrms. The subject of managerial competency has been
studied since the early 20th century and deﬁned in subsequent years as researchers
attempted to articulate the characteristics of successful managers. The competency and
managerial practice literature offered a useful platform for shaping the abstract,
situational, and technical environment of biotechnology management. Additionally, it
provided a perspective for comparing the results of this study of managerial attributes in
biotechnology ﬁrms with other studies. Most importantly, analyzing the relationship
between the results of this study with previous research on managerial behavior,
competencies, and organizational design forms allowed for the development of theory
regarding management in new and emerging ﬁrms.

What may be most interesting about the literature that has been produced on
managerial competencies and behavior is what it has not addressed. It has often provided
a prescriptive and rational approach to the managerial role, but it has rarely suggested the
evocative, ambiguous, and tenuous position that the manager often has to assume. In
many ways, the literature on managerial behavior and competencies provides normative
guidelines for the role of the manager. This inherent dissonance between the literature on
competencies led the researcher to other sources in order to effectively discuss the
managerial role and managerial knowledge of the biotechnology manager. Hence, this
discussion includes not only the existing literature on managerial competencies and
behavior, but aspects of organizational strategy and other management-related literature
that addresses management in terms of its direction, development, and various forms. It
must also acknowledge the importance of contributions from the literature of education

regarding theories of learning and professional development.

13

The results of this study indicate similarities and dissimilarities between the
literature on competencies, managerial behavior, organizational forms, learning, and
strategy. A number of managerial behaviors and attributes were identiﬁed as participants
discussed the characteristics for successful management in biotechnology ﬁrms. These
manifestations of managerial knowledge and competency include the concepts of
entrepreneurship, adaptability, timeliness, collaboration, and knowledge integration, with
its subcategories of knowledge management, knowledge development, and knowledge
diffusion. Each of these conclusions will be considered in relation to the existing
literature and its contribution to theory development.

Entrepreneurship

The category of entrepreneurship offers a perspective on biotechnology managers
as enterprising individuals actively engaged in promoting and organizing the often
precarious business of scientiﬁc endeavors. While entrepreneurial attributes have been
viewed as managerial traits for some time, the study of entrepreneurship itself is fairly
recent as is the identiﬁcation of entrepreneurship as a managerial competency.
Increasingly, the entrepreneurial qualities of creativity and innovation have been
recognized as powerful managerial tools in business organizations, just as they have
always been valued in the ﬁelds of research, development, and science.

The entrepreneurial qualities that may be found in the managerial role evoke a
wide range of characteristics. Timmons (1989) identiﬁed the following characteristics of
the entrepreneur: total commitment, determination, and perseverance; a drive to achieve
and grow; an orientation to opportunities and goals; taking initiative and personal

responsibility; persistence in problem-solving; “veridical awareness” (i.e., realistic

14

optimism) and sense of humor; seeking and using feedback; internal locus control; a
tolerance for ambiguity, stress, and uncertainty; calculated risk-taking and risk-sharing; a
low need for status and power; integrity and reliability; decisiveness, urgency, and
patience; the ability to deal with failure “using failure as a way of learning”, and as team
builder and “hero maker” (Timmons 1989, 32—40).

Interestingly, some of these same qualities were described as important aspects
for biotechnology managers. This was evident in the use of failure as a learning tool for
scientists and managers, persistence when facing risk and adversity, and the calculated
and determined drive to succeed that participants described. Particularly because
biotechnology represents the commercialization of scientiﬁc knowledge and discovery
processes, participants suggested that the progress from scientist to entrepreneur was a
natural transfer of abilities and knowledge. This connection was the subject of Samson's
study, Scientists as Entrepreneurs (1990) which analyzed the relationship between
scientists and the creation of start-up scientiﬁc business ventures. Samson found that the
motivation for scientists to become entrepreneurs was based on three factors: the
advancement of science and its applications, the personal opportunity to build a business,
become an entrepreneur or businessman, and the opportunity to build equity and make
money. Most frequently, scientists moved to positions in which they were involved with
production, in supporting and generating new science and technology, or in
entrepreneurial roles where creativity and risk-taking were required.

Entrepreneurship as an aspect of managerial knowledge appears in Mintzberg’s
study of the managerial role, The Nature of Managerial Work (1973). Mintzberg derived

four “decisional roles” of executives that involve strategic direction. The decisional roles

15

include: entrepreneur, disturbance handler, resource allocator, and negotiator. These roles
appear to be aligned with this discussion of the entrepreneurial role, which constantly
scans the environment, “looking for opportunities and for situations that may be
considered problems.” (1980, p. 78). In the Mintzberg framework, the entrepreneurial
role is concerned with the management of change in organizations, including new
opportunities and problems. As a negotiator, Mintzberg’s manager represents the
company externally. Similarly, the manager in a small biotechnology ﬁrm serves in a
liaison role with clients, investors, and in initiating relationships with other ﬁrms.
Another way of describing the managerial role as entrepreneur may be the term
“optimizer” from an earlier study. The manager as optimizer suggests a view of the
manager as creatively availing himself or herself of every possible or potential resource
for the ﬁrm’s advancement (Campbell, Dunnette, Lawler, Weick, 1970). This view of
optimization management was shared by participants in the biotechnology study.

The role that entrepreneurship would have in management practices of the future
was predicted by Drucker (1974).

For three-quarters of a century management has meant primarily

managing the established, going business. Entrepreneurship and

innovation... while mentioned in many management books, were not

seen as central from 1900 till today. From now on, management will

have to concern itself more and more with creating the new in addition

to optimizing the already existing. Managers will have to become ,

entrepreneurs, will have to learn to build and manage innovative

organizations. (1974, p. 31)

The development of the manager as entrepreneur is identiﬁed by Boyatzis (1982)
in his integrated competency model, which describes categories of competencies as

“clusters”. The leadership cluster, goal and action management cluster, and directing

subordinates cluster suggest an entrepreneurial framework for management, featuring

16

competencies such as proactivity and efﬁciency, use of socialized power, “concern with
impact” and stamina. These qualities were regarded as integral aspects of the effective
manager in Boyatzis’ study, The Competent Manager (1982), which described
competencies such as assertiveness, the ability to inspire, the willingness to lead others
and to take risks as important aspects of the managerial role.

Particularly because the products of biotechnology are new and based in emerging
technologies, life science managers must learn to thrive in a precarious business
environment. They often have to become project champions and introduce others to the
technology, venture capitalists as well as consumers. In doing so, they interpret ﬁrm
experiences and forge new relationships. In determining the conditions for interaction
between various stakeholders and constituencies, life science managers are
“sensemakers” in an “enacted environment” (Weick, 1995), the social construction of the
managerial role which they have created (Berger and Luckman, 1966).

Because managers in small start-up biotechnology ﬁrms assume a number of
roles, their responsibilities may range from operating-level management to senior
management to chief strategy roles as company presidents. Bartlett and Ghoshal (1997)
suggest that new management roles and personal competencies are needed in
organizations today, and that generic models cannot address all managerial tasks. They
state that in the new organization, frontline managers must become “innovative
entrepreneurs” while senior managers are “developmental coaches” and the top-level
executives are “institution builders”. As entrepreneurs, Operating-level managers are
charged with creating and pursuing opportunities, attracting and utilizing scarce skills and

resources, and management continuous improvement processes. They must be creative

17

and intuitive managers, exhibiting powers of persuasion, a competitive spirit, and
persistence. The in-depth knowledge of their ﬁeld provides the entrepreneurial manager
with the ability to recognize business opportunities and commit resources.

The ability to span boundaries was recognized as an important aspect of the
managerial role in biotechnology ﬁrms. Miles and Snow suggest that managerial
competencies are prescribed by organizational form, and suggest competencies for ﬁrms
that are “cellular organizations” or “fourth-wave organizations” (Miles and Snow 1996;
Allred, Snow and Miles, 1996). Although most dedicated biotechnology ﬁrms (Dodgson
1991) are small enough that they may be likened to one cell rather than many cells, both
the biological analogy and the organizational comparison are apropos. Miles and Snow
describe the cellular organization as a place “where creative and entrepreneurial activities
are valued”, and in which the resources include shared knowledge and learning within a
team setting. (1996, p. 111). Because cellular organizations are without steep hierarchies
and rules, Miles and Snow say that managers will need strong self-management skills.
Much like managers in biotechnology ﬁrms, the competencies for managers in these
organizations include the ability to span boundaries and work in several capacities within
the organization.

The emergence of a “new competitive landscape”, Bettis and Hitt suggest, is
redeﬁning the work of the manager (Bettis and Hitt 1995). In describing the “new
managerial mindset”, they identify a series of traits associated with the business
landscape of the 21St century. Among these are “dynamic efficiency”, which includes
innovation and entrepreneurial behavior and concurrent learning and unlearning abilities.

Similarly, Limerick and Cunnington (1993) suggest that entrepreneurial cultures must

18

replace competitive organizational cultures in the current “discontinuous” business
environment. A reassessment of the managerial role along “entrepreneurial lines” was
also suggested by duGay, Salaman, and Rees (1996). Morgan offers another view of the
competent manager in his description of “outside-in management”, where managers are
responsible for positioning the organization with its changing environment (1988).

It appears that the entrepreneurial characteristics of successful managers of life
sciences ﬁrms are increasingly recognized as essential for all managers. Perhaps an
entrepreneurial spirit is one of the core competencies of managers in the future. The
results of the study appear to coincide with more of the current management literature
than earlier management studies. Yet the link between contemporary management and
entrepreneurial knowledge bears exploration. Entrepreneurship appears to be an effective
management model for contemporary managers, not only in biotechnology ﬁrms, but
possibly in many other settings.

Adaptability

The need for biotechnology managers to be adaptable, change-oriented, ﬂexible in
uncertain conditions, and to plan for contingencies was evident in discussions with the
study participants. That these qualities would be key competencies in an industry that is
inventing itself is hardly surprising. Yet it can be argued that the biotechnology industry,
volatile, on the edge of new discoveries daily, redeﬁning the future of medicine and
agriculture, is representative of the punctuated change and momentum that exists in many
industries. Therefore, the utility of adaptive management appears to be transferable to a
number of settings. While it is difficult to ﬁnd references to managerial competencies of

ﬂexibility and adaptability in early managerial texts, the development of contingency

19

theory acknowledged the situational dilemmas of management (Burns and Stalker 1961,
Lawrence and Lorsch 1967).

Contingency theory provided a response to previous prescriptive views of
management. The multivariate nature of managerial work recognized by contingency
theorists focused on four variables: environment, job, person, and situational. Since then,
organizational research has increasingly recognized adaptability as a critical element of
successful managerial behavior. Sayles (1964) suggested that internal and environmental
dynamics inﬂuence managerial practices, and that “Successful managers recognize these
dynamics and seek to shift their own behavior, both as a means of detecting changes in
the system and responding to the changes that are identiﬁed.” (1980, p. 258) For
managers in biotechnology ﬁrms, adaptability is a necessary competency for survival,
and a manifestation of the very organic nature of the ﬁrm’s products. Study participants
attributed the variability of their work to a number of inﬂuences. These include the wide
range of their responsibilities, the pace of new knowledge, the competitive nature of their
environment, and the uncertainty of scientiﬁc processes.

From Mintzberg’s perspective, adaptability appears to be an aspect of the
managerial persona as periods of change, stability, and grth occur in organizations. In
emerging organizations, Mintzberg suggests that the managerial roles of entrepreneur and
negotiator are required, and in later stages the leader and disturbance handler role
develops. One important difference in Mintzberg’s study is that he depicts these roles in
relation to organizational stages, moving the organization from conditions of turbulence
to stability, wherein the manager controls or “reduces his organization’s ﬂexibility”

(1980, p. 124). The managerial role works as an adaptive mechanism, removing

20

organizational uncertainties and responding to environmental threats. In a similar way,
Mintzberg’s resource allocator, deﬁned as one of the decisional manager roles, regulates
planning, priorities and resources, strategically positioning and adjusting to synchronize
the organization.

In a later work, Mintzberg described the work of the manager as one of managing
strategy: “to craft thought and action, control and learning, stability and change” (1989,
p. 38). Mintzberg refers to the “craft” of strategy, as an organic, emerging, and learned
process. He described the following aspects of managerial work as important to strategy
management: the ability to manage stability, to detect discontinuity, to know the
business, to manage patterns, to reconcile change and continuity. These can be
considered competencies in the management of strategy, a primary managerial task that
Mintzberg identiﬁed and continued to pursue in his research. In combination, these
characteristics infer competency in adaptability, based on the sensitive understanding of
issues concerning the ﬁrm, including internal capabilities and external inﬂuences. He also
advocated that schools of management endeavor to create curricula that addressed skills
in “decision-making under ambiguity” (1980, p. 191), rather than presenting decision-
making as existing in ﬁnite, highly-structured situations.

Adaptability as a managerial competency is important not only as a managerial
response to forces, issues, and problems, but as a managerial task that initiates adaptation
and change in regard to ﬁrm strategies. Boyatzis describes this aspect of the managerial
role as the “diagnostic use of concepts” which ﬁames events from a deductive and
analytic perspective. Ironically, in the context of this study, Boyatzis suggests that in

doing so, managers “adopt the role of the scientist” in interpreting events and

21

implementing projects (1982, p. 79). Interestingly, Boyatzis identiﬁed adaptability as a
competency in conjunction with stamina. He suggests the combined competency on the
assmnption that the context of organizational change demands high levels of energy and
tenacity as well as adaptable management practices.

Boyatzis’ study found that middle managers exhibited much higher levels of
stamina and adaptability than entry level managers, and that higher performing managers
scored higher in these attributes than less effective managers. The personality traits
aligned with this competency include the ability to perform well under high stress, and
retaining an orientation to detail and patience under arduous circumstances. These
characteristics have been deﬁned by other researchers as “behavioral ﬂexibility, tolerance
of uncertainty, and stamina and adaptability” (Boyatzis, p. 170). Importantly, the traits
correspond to the descriptions of successful managerial categories by managers in
biotechnology ﬁrms.

A number of studies have concluded that ﬂexibility is a critical aspect of the
managerial role in current organizations. Bettis and Hitt stated, “The watchword in the
new competitive landscape is ﬂexibility in strategy and organization” (1995, p. 14). The
MIT Sloan School of Management initiative, “Inventing Organizations of the 21St
Century” found that learning to adapt to “continuous and multi-dimensional change”,
increasing managerial adaptability, and promoting innovation were important challenges
for organizations of the future. Bettis and Hitt suggested advanced forms of ﬂexibility in
the continuos learning and unlearning of information toward new ﬁrm strategies.

Volberda ascertained that ﬂexibility was a managerial task consisting of many “dynamic

22

capabilities” that combined to form a “ﬂexibility mix” that he deﬁned as “steady-state,
operational, structural, and strategic ﬂexibilities” (V olberda 1998).

Managerial adaptability may take many forms, including: modiﬁcation of
procedures, new alliances with supplier ﬁrms or even competitors, re-conceiving work
teams, or innovating product lines. In fact, Sayles said, “only the most standardized, static
processes do not require adaptive responsiveness among managers” (1993, p. 206).
Because managerial ﬂexibility builds ﬁrm ﬂexibility, adaptive competencies in managers
become critical indicators of ﬁrm capability. This is probably why Ghoshal and Bartlett
(1997) advocated for “embedded organizational ﬂexibility” by building multidimensional
structures, dynamic processes, and non-traditional career paths. Miles and Snow (1997)
also suggest that managers adopt career patterns that can change direction and be
adaptive to market trends and new technologies.

The concept of adaptability is further extended by du Gay, Salaman, and Rees
(1996) who suggest that new forms of organizations that are anti-bureaucratic, organic
and ﬂexible require the development of particular managerial capacities. They use the
term “making up” to describe a managerial role that is adaptive to circumstances and able
to be deﬁned and redeﬁned to be responsive to ﬁrm conditions. They point out that the
deﬁnition Of the managerial role has changed over time, and that the “reinvention” of the
manager suggests that skills such as creativity, sensitivity, and imagination may be
considered to be current managerial competencies. This is the premise of Goleman’s
Working with Emotional Intelligence (1998) which suggests that adaptive emotional

responsiveness is a key trait in successful corporate leaders. Morgan also suggests that

23

two of the important managerial attributes are in “managing multiple meanings” and
managing transition (Morgan, 1988, p. 133).

Contemporary management is deﬁned by the discontinuous and ambiguous
conditions in which it exists. Managerial characteristics that are adaptable, permeable,
open, and change-oriented can transcend these challenges and ﬁnd acceptable ﬁrm
strategies. The environment that biotechnology managers and scientists describe may be
more complex and moving more quickly than some other industries, but the managerial
role in this accelerated pace of discovery and innovation may assist in informing other
studies of management. Such a connection may transcend boundaries between industries
and provide a model for adaptive management in other settings.

Timeliness

Speed, time, and adaptability are intrinsically linked concepts in strategic
management. Even the most ﬂexible organization is bound by time and the speed of
managerial decision making. Acknowledging the inﬂuence of time on managerial work,
Drucker suggested that time is one of the important aspects of management, because
“management is concerned with decisions for action. And action always aims at results in
the future” (1974, p. 44). The managerial role in biotechnology is one of action that is
cognizant of the constraints and opportunities that time offers. Timeliness in the life
sciences requires an understanding of the cycles of scientiﬁc processes, a senSitivity to
the pace of the scientiﬁc endeavor, and an ability to think and act in the moment. Current
business conditions involving accelerated pace and intense competition and discontinuity
have been designated as contributing to a “hypercompetitive” business environment

(D’Aveni, 1994).

24

Even though the managerial role has always been constrained by time, writers
have suggested that the pace of business appears to have increased considerably for the
contemporary manager. For instance, in 1964 Sayles acknowledged the continuous
demands on “work-ﬂow” and need to control time in order to stay at a point of
equilibrium, but by 1993 was thoroughly cognizant of the constraints of time as a
consuming managerial challenge. He emphasized the managers needed to have “the
capacity to make fast-paced trade-offs...focusing on the ever-changing needs of
coordination and the overall system” in all aspects of managerial decision-making (1993,
p. 14). The environment of biotechnology suggests that managerial response and
initiative must be timely: swiftly delivered and adroitly cadenced. In this way, timeliness
implies managerial efﬁciency as well as the notion of an active and engaged
management.

Proactivity and an efﬁciency orientation were identiﬁed by Boyatzis as
managerial competencies in the “goal and action management cluster”. Proactivity
connotes “a disposition toward taking action to accomplish something”, initiating
managerial action and problem solving with a sense of immediacy and timeliness
(Boyatzis, 1982, p. 72) The efﬁciency orientation suggests a manager who sets and
attains goals, is concerned with achievement, and implements plans in an efficient
manner. Boyatzis found that both proactivity and the efﬁciency orientation were
signiﬁcantly linked to effective managerial performance. Similarly, Mintzberg’s
decisional roles are concerned with scheduling, strategy setting, and initiation,

managerial activities that are dependent upon efficient use of time. Allred, Snow and

25

Miles identiﬁed managerial traits that included “ﬂexibility, integrity, and other traits that
offer boundary—spanning capabilities” (1996, pp. 23-25).

Throughout the interview process, participants suggested that time was a
persistent and inﬂuential force in their work lives. Managers in life science ﬁrms
constantly work with time pressures in the form of deadlines, product development time,
and the intervals between projects. How they view time, and how it shapes the
managerial work, is a construction that is critical to ﬁrm progress. Participants described
both the speed that inﬂuences management in their ﬁrms as well as the length and
uncertainty of the experimental processes. For biotechnology managers, anticipating the
scientiﬁc milestones that are necessary for ﬁrm proﬁtability while spending grant or
venture capitalists’ funds may create organizational tensions that managers in larger
bureaucratic cultures rarely encounter.

In biotechnology, time can be a complex series of lengthy cycles or consist of
simple and unequivocal experimental consequences. Dubinskas’ study of scientists and
managers found large discrepancies between the two groups in regard to the cultural
construction of time (1988). Scientists had an approach to which was open-ended,
unstructured, and long-range in its scope. Managers had distinct goals and a strict focus
on product generation and application. Dubinskas attributed these differences to the
training of scientists, in which scientiﬁc concerns, including theory proof, basic science,
and thorough conceptual understandings take precedence over timelines. He compared
this with business school training, which he described as focusing on succinct portrayals

of the business environment using case studies and time-bounded decision-making.

26

The construction of scientiﬁc time was further examined by Traweek (1988) in
her study of high energy physicists’ conceptualizations of time. Traweek found that the
scientists’ theories about time and space in particle physics and the laboratory inﬂuenced
their construction of time. Traweek distinguished between six distinct types of laboratory
time: up and down time (in regard to the accelerator beam; beamtime; lifetime of the
equipment; lifetime of the laboratory (design, funding, and phasing out); career time, in
regard to the amount of time devoted to a particular area of research or laboratory; and
the more abstract “lifetime of an idea”. Traweek’s study suggests that the scientiﬁc
understanding of time and its many dimensions may be a perspective to consider in the
management of biotechnology ﬁrms.

While the participants in the current study of biotechnology managers
acknowledged differences in scientiﬁc time versus managerial time, wide discrepancies
did not emerge. This was possibly attributable to the fact that most participants were
managers with scientiﬁc backgrounds who understood and reconciled the constraints of
laboratory time versus product deadlines. A number of participants acknowledged the
differences between their former scientiﬁc life and how they approach their work as
managers intent on product application and the pursuit of competitive advantage. Most
biotechnology managers in the study had no business school training. The contrasts
between how they were trained in terms of the construct of time and the time pressures
that they encountered as managers were dramatic differences that they had to reconcile.
The focus on applied scientiﬁc knowledge prevails in biotechnology, and participants

discussed the cultural differences between the concept of time in the biotechnology

27

industry and the concept of time as practiced in the pursuit of basic science and
theoretical knowledge in academic laboratories.

The differentiation between the construction of time in academic settings versus
biotechnology created a managerial knowledge shift for the life science managers and
affected the scientists in a similar way. The managerial attribute of timeliness suggests a
managerial competency that understands the demands of time. The ability to maneuver
within narrow time constraints as well as the prospect of many product development
years appears to be a trait that successful managers in biotechnology have adopted. This
ability may Offer insights toward the development of managers in other industries and
characteristics for managers of the future.

Collaboration

Collaborative arrangements are very important to effectiveness in life science
ﬁrms, where product knowledge entails cross-functional awareness and expertise. In such
an environment, it becomes incumbent upon the manager to encourage collaboration and
provide opportunities for open communication. In this role, the managerial enterprise
involves leading others toward closing gaps and merging knowledge toward product
development. This requires sensitivity to communication, interpersonal issues, and a
proclivity toward making decisions that take a variety of perspectives into account.

Mintzberg suggested that the egalitarian framework that emerged as an attribute
of successﬁrl biotechnology manager would be an important competency for future
managers. He predicted that the “the social shiﬁ toward greater organizational
democracy” (1973, p. 167) would require managers to be more collaborative. In

comparison with Sayles’ conclusions, the work of the life science manager most closely

28

resembles Sayles’ “project manager”, which he suggests contrasts with traditional
management roles. Like life science managers, Sayles’ project managers are responsible
for managing professional employees. Additionally, Sayles described the skills needed in
the project manager role: bargaining, intervention and participation, indirection versus
orders, capability for quick response, waiting, providing assistance, use of meetings, and
technical coordination (Sayles, 1980). These bear a strong resemblance to what
participants described as competencies for the life sciences manager.

The relationship between Sayles’ discussion of the project manager and the words
of several participants in the study are strikingly similar. In regard to “technical
coordination, Sayles deﬁnes it as: “to interrelate the work of interdependent groups and
individuals” (1980, p. 278). He suggests that the relationships between project manager
and employee have little to do with ordering directions, and much to do with inﬂuencing
the roles of specialists. The manager as non-expert must defer to the specialist whose
depth of knowledge substantively deﬁnes the process and direction of the project. In
much the same way, participants described their roles as initiating integrative and
collaborative structures within ﬁrms. What the manager lends to the experience,
according to Sayles, is a broad knowledge base about other aspects of the ﬁrm and
external forces, and the ability to share this understanding with the specialist to further
extend his expertise (Sayles, 1980, p. 275). In describing the project manager and the
matrix manager, Sayles suggests that the role of the manager entails an intermediary
relationship connecting various areas within the workplace through communication, work

ﬂow management, and other arrangements (p. 289).

29

The integrated competency model that Boyatzis described includes several
competencies that correspond to the responses from life science managers. These include
skills in the use of “socialized power”, managing group process, and “positive regar ”.
Managers who implement socialized power inﬂuence other and bring together alliances,
networks, and teams. They manage the group process by building coalitions and
coalescing people around ideas and ﬁrm strategies. Boyatzis deﬁnes positive regard as a
belief in and respect for others and a worldview that people are basically good. All three
competencies were linked to superior managerial performance in Boyatzis’ study.
Drucker had envisioned this years before when he suggested that one of new challenges
for managers lay in the manager’s responsibility for the quality of life in the ﬁrm. He
explained, “In the business enterprise, this means that the attainment of the quality of life
will have to be considered an opportunity to be converted by management into proﬁtable
business” (1974, p. 35).

Valuing the concept of community and the manager’s role in building community
within the organization was identiﬁed as an attribute of managerial success in life science
ﬁrms. Drucker had stated the emerging importance of this: “The community is
increasingly in the organization. It will be the job of management to make the
individual’s values and aspirations redound to organizational energy and performance”
(1974, p. 35). The emphasis on building community in a hypercompetitive business
environment may appear to be an unrealistic challenge, but it proved to be an important
inﬂuence for the biotechnology managers and scientists who participated in the study.
The category of collaboration suggests a view Of management that is a reciprocal,

involving social and intellectual exchange. The participants conﬁrmed the need for

30

managers to possess collaborative management skills and to promote shared
understandings between members of the ﬁrm.

Collaborative management is based on trust and Offers a regard for workers’
contributions, open debate, and non-judgmental interdisciplinary processes. Sayles
emphasized the importance of managers as team leaders and in coordinating cross-
functional decisions. He suggested that managers “need to be adept at orchestrating
decisions...from widely dispersed specialists” (1993, p. 186). According to Sayles, the
collaborative manager works to build interdependent teams that are “mutually responsive
decision groups” (p. 186). Much like the consensus that developed among participants in
the study, Sayles stated, “Only through collaborative efforts and mutual understanding is
it possible to integrate multiple streams of technology” (1993, p. 197). Miles and Snow
predicted that managers of the future would need to develop approaches “so that multi-
disciplinary resources can be quickly assembled and utilized”, since project teams will be
the “primary organizing unit” for ﬁrms (1996, p. 24).

In their analysis of the skills needed in the network organization, Allred, Miles,
and Snow (1996) recognized “collaborative leadership” as a competency, deﬁning it as
the “collaborative abilities needed as project teams become the primary organizing unit”
(1996, p. 23). They suggested that “collaborative knowledge and abilities were the
deﬁning managerial competency” in their study (p. 21). They found that competency in
collaborative management involves skills in three areas: referral, partnering, and
relationship management (p. 21). Allred, Miles, and Snow deﬁne referral skills as
abilities in analysis of problems and bringing together cross-functional solutions. Skills in

partnering involve coalescing multiple positions for “mutually beneﬁcial outcomes.”

31

Relationship management involves the interpersonal aspects of management in
responding to customers and business alliances.

Similarly, Bartlett and Ghoshal determined that managers must be loyal to their
own value structure, beyond that of the ﬁrm or their superiors. They suggested that one of
the most important managerial competencies was “to create an environment of mutual
cooperation and trust” (1996, p.113). Their discussion of “developing a collective
identity driven by a sense of urgency” echoes the perspectives of study participants who
created conditions of competition even as they worked to build camaraderie and esprit de
corps. (1997, p. 117). In a similar manner to the descriptions of the biotechnology
scientists and managers in the study, Bartlett and Ghoshal articulated the importance of
declassifying and sharing information in order to expose a wide spectrum of employees
to ﬁrm knowledge.

Conceptualizing the managerial role as that of collaborative strategist suggests the
collegiality found in academic organizations and professional organizations where
members share common platforms of knowledge. Liebeskind, Olivers, Zucker, and
Brewer (1998) studied social networks in the biotechnology industry that crossed
organizations and brought scientists together from academic and industrial environments.
These collaborative knowledge exchanges, the researchers found, allowed small
biotechnology ﬁrms access to new information resulting in new ﬁrm competencies which
involved cost efﬁciencies and faster product development. The development of a new
competence, Prahalad also suggested, “embraces the idea of inter-team transfer and
sharing” where “individual excellence, scientiﬁc knowledge, creativity, and imagination

are transformed into team expertise and organizational capability” (1998, p. 23). The

32

corporate leader’s role, Morgan offers, is to develop collaboration through a shared vision
and “to communicate that sense of vision in an actionable form” (1988, p. 48).

Collaborative patterns of management were identiﬁed throughout the study as
effective tools for organizing the workforce toward ﬁrm goals. There were many threads
of collaborative strategies that managers used in bringing together ideas and people. The
multi-disciplinary, cross-functional approach to management that participants described
is corroborated by many writers as an important managerial ability. In small life science
ﬁrms, collaboration is a compelling factor in sustaining competitive advantage. As large
companies increasingly depend on teams and small business units, the need for
coordination and collaboration becomes crucial. Managers of the future, as suggested by
this study and the literature, will be recognized for a collaborative and inclusive spirit of
management .

Knowledge Integration: Management, Development, and Diffusion

The identiﬁcation of knowledge integration as a category took place during the
transcript analysis and subsequent development of other themes. Knowledge integration,
and its subcategories of knowledge management, development, and diffusion became
Signiﬁcant underlying themes of the interview, although there were no questions in the
interview protocol that speciﬁcally addressed knowledge integration issues. Yet what
managers and scientists were consistently saying about managerial work in biotechnology
ﬁrms indicated that they knew the job to be aligned with knowledge management,
development, and diffusion in their ﬁrms. As a managerial attribute, knowledge

integration represents a relatively new direction in the discussion of managerial

33

competencies and an acknowledgement of recent developments regarding the knowledge-
based view of the ﬁrm.

The explosion of knowledge and increased access to information through the
lntemet and other new technologies has inﬂuenced many aspects of work in
organizations. Consequently, the expectations that all employees are “knowledge
workers” and the pressure to build corporate knowledge capacities has modiﬁed the tasks
of the manager. Early managerial philosophies ascribed very disparate roles to employee
and the manager, which placed the manager in a position of superior knowledge and
power and a non-cerebral, operational role to the employee. Changes in management
constructs grew in the 1970’s when positivist management principles and the American
automotive industry were ﬂoundering and other management practices gained global
recognition. These new approaches to management slowly began to supplant prescriptive
and hierarchical forms of management.

Some writers anticipated the evolution. Drucker used the term “knowledge
worker” as early as 1960, and identiﬁed knowledge as one of the key organizational
resources that needed to be managed, along with capital, physical assets, and time (1980,
p. 20). He suggested that the growth and production of knowledge was the most
important role of the manager, and that the knowledge worker was the most important
asset for any developed economy (1974, p. 32). Recently, he has suggested that there has
been an transition from a capitalistic society to a post-capitalistic, knowledge-based
society (1993). Mintzberg also discusses the role of the manager as “information
generalist”, as a monitor, a disseminator, and a spokesman. As monitor, the manager

develops internal and external information sources. Mintzberg comments that new

34

managers in particular must concentrate on the monitor role in order to “bring themselves
up to the level of knowledge needed for effective strategy-making” (Mintzberg, p. 168).
As a disseminator, internal and external information is conveyed to subordinates. In the
spokesman role, managers provide information to those outside his unit and the public.

The roles that Mintzberg described articulate what managers in biotechnology
ﬁrms must do to generate and diffuse knowledge within their ﬁrms. The monitoring role
corresponds to knowledge acquisition through personnel and bringing new scientiﬁc
knowledge from external sources: publications, the Internet, company alliances, and
professional associations. The disseminator role coincides with the area of knowledge
diffusion, the distribution of knowledge throughout the ﬁrm, as well as knowledge
development, in the expansion of knowledge toward common understandings. As a
scientiﬁc entrepreneur, the manager is Mintzberg’s spokesman and must represent the
company and convey information to the public and investors. As an “information
generalist”, the life sciences manager seeks ways to build ﬁrm capacity through the
introduction, sharing, and support of new knowledge. In his discussion of the emerging
managerial environment, Prahalad ascertained ﬁve managerial tasks for “managing
competencies in the new global market place” that are learning-based (1998, p. 21).
These include: gaining access to, and absorbing new knowledge; integrating multiple
streams of knowledge; sharing across cultures and distances; learning to forget; and
deploying competence across business unit boundaries.

The competencies that Prahalad describes relate to the ﬁndings in this study.
Prahalad distinguishes between two “knowledge streams” that together create the new

organizational competencies he describes. In Prahalad’s view, “people-embodied

35

knowledge”, which is both tacit and explicit, integrates with “capital-embodied
knowledge”, which includes both “proprietary and vendor-based” perspectives. The
emphasis on “learning to forget” is important; Prahalad says that there should be a strong
“forgetting curve” in order for organizational competencies to build. This concept is an
extension from the organizational learning research (Hedberg 1981; Argyris 1992), and
research regarding the knowledge-based view of the ﬁrm (Grant 1998). Bettis and Hitt
concluded that “the managerial mindset in the new competitive landscape must entail
continuous and simultaneous unlearning and learning” (1995, p. 14). Prahalad suggests
that the caveat for learning and unlearning for organizations and their managers is speed
and ﬂexibility in knowledge transfer and absorption (1998). This again implies
managerial competencies in knowledge diffusion, development, adaptability and
timeliness.

Knowledge development involves the manager as an educator and as a facilitator
of the educational process. One of Boyatzis’ ﬁndings within the “directing subordinates”
cluster was a competency in developing others (1982). This function encourages
employee learning, provides feedback, and assists the employee in training and
availability to resources. Interestingly, the correlation between this competency and
managerial performance appeared strongest with average performing managers. Boyatzis
suggested that the competency of developing others without a link to overall ﬁrm strategy
will deter managerial performance. Accordingly, Grant afﬁrms that in the knowledge-
based ﬁrm every member of the organization has a role in ﬁrm capability development

(1998).

36

Organizational capability rests on knowledge integration, according to Grant
(1998). This perspective strongly implicates the managerial role in designing strategies
for knowledge integration. Creating outcomes that increase ﬁrm capacity, Grant stresses,
means combining a spectrum of specialized knowledge from a number of individuals.
Therefore, the efficiency, scope, and ﬂexibility of integration are the prelude to building
competitive advantage, dependent upon the common knowledge within the ﬁrm and
infrastructure for communication and coordination. Grant proposes a model that
acknowledges the importance of tacit knowledge (N onaka 1994; Prahalad 1998) and the
external integration of networks between specialized groups and between ﬁrms
(Liebeskind, Oliver, Zucker, Brewer 1998). This corresponds to descriptions from
managers in life sciences ﬁrm who indicated that building common knowledge sets and
encouraging coordination, informality, and cross-functional team processes appeared to
contribute to ﬁrm capability.

If, as Grant says, “Knowledge has emerged as the most strategically-signiﬁcant
resource of thee ﬁrm” (1998, p. 298), then “knowledge networks” may offer a context for
information exchange. For biotechnology ﬁrms, this would indicate that favorable
conditions exist within research parks where several life science ﬁrms may coexist, or
positioning life science ﬁrms in close proximity to universities, or in scientiﬁc consortia,
conferences, and professional organizations. Creating conditions for exchange between
scientists, even scientists from supplier companies or competing ﬁrms, may well be a
future attribute of the life sciences manager. Several participants discussed on-going
arrangements with academic scientists, large pharmaceuticals and other strategic

partnering situations. Several studies on the biotechnology industry have recognized the

37

signiﬁcance of strategic alliances in creating ﬁrm-level and intra-organizational learning
(James 1995; Lane and Lubatkin 1998; Liebeskind, Oliver, Zucker, Brewer 1998; Shan,
Walker, and Kogut 1994). These collaborative exchanges between scientists ﬁrms may
strengthen research outcomes and create new technologies for life science ﬁrms.

The pace, discontinuity, and challenge of the biotechnology industry indicate that
it is an environment that is hypercompetitive. In their study of hypercompetitive
environments, Hanssen-Bauer and Snow conclude that the ability to create and apply
knowledge is a competitive advantage. They suggest that ﬁrm knowledge is created by
taking a proactive stance toward knowledge creation, which is presumably a managerial
responsibility (1996). Organizational learning, according to Hanssen-Bauer and Snow, is
enhanced by both commonality and diversity, and the key outcomes of this for the ﬁrm
are greater ﬂexibility and adaptability. It would appear that the emphasis on knowledge
development and difﬁision that biotechnology managers conveyed may be an essential
task for effective management. The cellular organization that Miles and Snow envision
demands a manager who can balance the knowledge of individual disciplines with
pragmatic ﬁrm outcomes. They liken the cellular ﬁrm to the medieval guild or
professional associations in terms of “sharing knowledge and accepting responsibility for
member competency and performance” (1998, p. 111). Biotechnology ﬁrms bear a
striking similarity to these communities of experts, where the manager may be the non-
expert who facilitates an informal, collaborative and learning orientation for the ﬁrm.

Snow and Miles predicted that the most advanced organizations of the future will
have individuals who: “scan the environment for new business opportunities, assemble

and coordinate resources to complete projects, and assume responsibility for bottom-line

38

performance” (1998, p. 23). This prediction is already an integral activity in small
biotechnology ﬁrms, as participants explained strategies for maintaining a competitive
edge through constant surveillance on the Internet and ongoing discussions between
scientists. This form of competitive intelligence gathering can be delineated as search
routines that depend on learning and involve “search, accumulation and diffusion, and
review”, according to Dodgson, whose study of technological learning in biotechnology
ﬁrms suggested that this is an essential skill for these ﬁrms and their managers (1991, p.
l 11). The race to achieve a patent or progress on discoveries, Dodgson maintains, relies
on “the ability to learn quickly”.

Knowledge is the platform of life science ﬁrms, and the management of
knowledge is an integral aspect of managerial work in life science ﬁrms. As writers and
researchers discuss management in contemporary organizations, they consistently focus
on the importance of knowledge management and organizational learning. Knowledge
integration and its components, knowledge management, knowledge development, and
knowledge difﬁrsion, as identiﬁed by the participants of the study, are increasingly

recognized as precious managerial attributes.

39

Chapter Three
The Context of Managerial Knowledge and Learning:
A Framework and Methodology

Management occurs in an organizational context and individual perspectives
about management are constructed from experience, history, and interpretation.
Perspectives about management can be formed from a formal program of study, such as
college courses or seminars, or distilled from lived, informal, and observed processes.
The framework for this qualitative study is based on a social constructivist perspective,
which views the individual in relation to the social context. Thus, individual knowledge
in organizations is the product of social interaction, shared meaning, and experience
(Berger and Luckman 1966; Gergen and Gergen 1991).

Accounts of the world...take place within shared systems of intelligibility—
usually a spoken or written language. These accounts are not viewed as

the expression of the speaker’s internal processes (such as cognition,
intention), but as an expression of relationships among persons.

(Gergen and Gergen 1991, p.78)

Berger and Luckman (1966) suggested that knowledge is a socially constructed
process, guided by a subjective view of reality. They stated: “Everyday life presents itself
as a reality interpreted by men and subjectively meaningful to them as a coherent world”
(1966, p. 19). Schwandt discusses the interpretation of experience as the central theme of
the constructivist approach (1994). The concept of constructivism focuses on the
construction of meaning in human existence as it occurs in lived experiences. In this
sense, the social construction of knowledge represents a “process of social exchange”
(Schwandt 1994, p. 127) which combines a number of internal and external factors

inﬂuencing the development of perspectives. In a similar way, Guba and Lincoln (1989)

distinguish between the “objective world” and the mental constructions of individuals

40

that interpret and deﬁne reality, and which become “self-sustaining and self-renewing”
(Guba and Lincoln 1989, p. 179).

The constructivist framework implies that managerial knowledge itself is a social
construction, conditioned by many inﬂuences. Managerial knowledge is thus mediated by
organizational relationships, events, and expectations as well as individual experiences
and learning. It is, in the words of Guba and Lincoln, the “paradigm out of which the
constructor operates” (1989, p. 132). Learning about management involves not only the
observed and empirical aspects of management, but also becoming aware of underlying
managerial assumptions and understandings. It is a sophisticated and subtle form of
professional knowledge, involving a high degree of internalized knowledge and merged
experiential information. From this perspective, the role of the manager is seen as the
interpreter and constructor of organizational processes, responsible for the creation,
deﬁnition, and accomplishment of organizational enterprises.

The construction of managerial knowledge may be viewed as an ongoing
developmental task in the practice of management. Weick’s notion of “sensemaking”
suggests that situations of ambiguity and uncertainty lead to retrospection and attempts at
meaning based on experience, context, and identity construction. His “enacted
environment” merges action, cognition, and interpretation of organization situations, in
which people are engaged in creating their own environments and subsequently are
shaped by their own creations. (Weick, 1995, p. 31) Weick emphasizes the active role of
sensemaking as a creative extension of the interpretive persona.

Thus, the concept of sensemaking is valuable because it highlights the

invention that precedes interpretation. It is also valuable because it implies
a higher level of engagement by the actor. (1995, p. 14)

41

The concept of sensemaking may have particular relevance in the emerging industry of
biotechnology. Weick identiﬁed two major types of sensemaking: in “situations of
ambiguity or uncertainty” and in “incongruent, discontinuous environments” (1995, p.
91).

From another perspective, the phenomenon of “mental models” (Argyris and
Schon 1978 ) articulates a description of the world based on an individual’s exposure and
perceptions. Schon extends this further with his research on the “reﬂective practitioner”,
in which he discusses the continuous evaluation of the professional experience and the
construction of professional meaning. Schon’s research provides a framework for
understanding managerial knowledge and learning as an ability to reﬂect upon one’s
practice in an ongoing pursuit of learning and development (Schon 1989).

The experience of management is inﬂuenced by individual and social
relationships. Bandura suggests that indirect or vicarious experiences can provide social
learning opportunities through abstract modeling (Bandura 1977). Thus, in the
Observation of management and managerial response to a variety of situations, those who
are not in managerial roles may form perspectives, gain insights, learn about, and practice
management. Kolb’s research on experiential learning offers a four cycle process in
which concrete experience translates to reﬂective observation, then abstract
conceptualization, and active experimentation (Kolb 1984). The experiential learning
framework is grounded in knowledge that is “created through the transformation of
experience” (Kolb 1984, p. 38).

Both managers and scientists operate in larger professional communities which

further deﬁne and infer professional understandings. Nonaka refers to “communities of

42

interaction” which assist in developing new knowledge in individuals and ﬁrms (N onaka
1994). This suggests that knowledge is diffused, interpreted, and reinvented among
members of professional communities and that learning occurs as a continuous process.
Wenger’s research offers a perspective on these “communities of practice” and what he
terms “knowing in practice” (Wenger 1998, p. 134). Much like Nonaka’s concept of
“communities of interaction” the “communities of practice” engage in the “negotiation of
meaning” as a result of exchange between members of the professional group.

This concept of professional exchange as deﬁned by Wenger includes the
development of standards for professional competence. He suggests that competence in
communities of practice may be expanded beyond mastery of skills and abilities to
perform particular actions (1998, p. 136).

What can be called knowledge, therefore, is not just a matter

of local regimes of competence; it depends also on the

orientation of these practices within broader constellations.

Yet, whatever discourses we use to deﬁne what knowledge is,

our communities of practice are a context of mutual engagement

where these discourses can touch our experience and thus be

given new life. In this regard, knowing in practice involves an

interaction between the local and the global.

(Wenger, p. 141)

Thus, management in biotechnology ﬁrms may be considered in several ways: as the
managerial role in a particular ﬁrm, in the larger biotechnology industry, and in relation
to a myriad of other management roles in similar and dissimilar industries. Wenger says
that “competence membership” within communities of practice may be deﬁned as

“mutuality of engagement” (with other members), “accountability to the enterprise,” and

participation (“personal or vicarious”) in the history of the practice (Wenger, p. 137).

43

Most of the managers in the study had made a transition from scientist to manager
bridging from one community of practice to another. Some still operated in both worlds,
supervising laboratories or conducting their own research. Most did not have formal
training in management. Because managerial learning may be assumed to take place both
formally and informally, Lave and Wenger’s framework of situated learning and
legitimate peripheral participation has relevance in this study (Lave and Wenger, 1991).

Learning viewed as situated activity has as its central deﬁning

characteristic a process that we call legitimate peripheral participation.

By this we mean to draw attention to the point that learners inevitably

participate in communities of practitioners and that the mastery of

knowledge and skill requires newcomers to move toward full

participation in the sociocultural practices of a community.

(Lave and Wenger 1991 , p. 29)
The concept of legitimate peripheral participation, according to Lave and Wenger,
“ involves participation as a way of learning — of both absorbing and being absorbed in —
the ‘culture of practice’ ” (Lave and Wenger 1991, p. 95).

Workplace learning, learning-in-working, and situated learning theories (Lave and
Wenger 1990; Brown and Duguid 1991; Brown, Collins and Duguid 1989) are social
constructivist views of learning. Learning is acquired and emerges from workplace
relationships, discussions, and observations. “Learners are acquiring not explicit, formal
“expert knowledge” but the embodied ability to behave as community members.” (Brown
and Duguid 1991). For scientists entrenched in communities-of—practice bound by the
logic and testing of scientiﬁc knowledge, learning about managerial practices may create
new mental maps that resemble those of management and the business community.

Consequently, the possibility of new communities-of—practice may be created that, in

turn, may assist in informing the practice of management.

44

The connection between working, learning, and innovation may be of particular
signiﬁcance in this study. Innovation is so much a part of the biotechnology environment
that it in combination with newly acquired managerial knowledge may enrich ﬁrm
capabilities. Brown and Duguid suggest that the synergies created between working and
learning may engender “communities of interpretation” engaged in “learning-in-
practice”. These groups or organizations are “inherently innovative” and “drive
innovation by allowing parts of the organization to step outside ...and simply try
something new” (Brown and Duguid, p. 51).

It is this process of seeing the world anew that allows organizations

reciprocally to see themselves anew and to overcome discontinuities

in their environment and their structure. (Brown and Duguid, p. 53)

In the development of managerial competencies through leaming-in-practice, managers
in biotechnology ﬁrms may advance company innovation and drive growth.

The literature on managerial competencies represents an attempt to make explicit
the knowledge, skills, and tasks of the effective manager. The perspective of managerial
competencies attempts to organize managerial knowledge into speciﬁc behaviors,
activities and processes that contribute to successful performance in organizations. In
concentrating on extemalized managerial characteristics exhibited through interviews,
observation, and surveys with managers, the construct of managerial competencies offers
parameters for understanding managerial knowledge (Mintzberg 1973; Boyatzis 1982;
Spencer and Spencer 1993; Miles and Snow 1998; duGay, Salaman, Rees 1996; Prahalad
1998; Sandberg 2000).

The challenges of describing managerial behavior and the difﬁculty of

constructing an enduring list of managerial competencies were described by Sayles

45

(1964) as cyclical and dependent upon historical interpretation. Thus, deﬁnitions from the
early 20th century, as the transition to the industrial age began, saw management “as a
paternal, moral problem” (Sayles, 1980 p. 6). Later, management became “a training,
conditioning, and learning problem” (1980, p. 9) in which the importance of learning
particular jobs and identifying likely workers was given precedence. The perspective of
management as a science or “scientiﬁc management” began to dominate the literature of
management behavior in the 1960’s. Sayles identiﬁes this in terms of “management as
applied psychology” (1980, p. 11). He ascertained that theories of management did not
yet have criteria for measuring managerial behavior or the language “to describe
administration and organization and to discuss its problems” (Sayles, 1980, p. 18).

Despite the number of texts on effective managerial behavior and competencies,
there appears to be less discussion about managerial knowledge and learning. Most of the
research on managerial competencies has been based on empirical and observed
information because the acquisition of more implicit and subjective data is elusive and
much less quantiﬁable. This suggests that there are many dimensions of managerial
knowledge which remain tacit and are not well understood. Managerial knowledge
combines both tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge (Polyani 1966). Nonaka
distinguishes tacit knowledge as the unarticulated, intuitive and active embodiment of
management and explicit knowledge as that which is expressed, distinct, or “codiﬁed” by
words and numbers (Nonaka 1994, p. 16).

Learning about management involves not only the observed and empirical aspects

of management, but also becoming aware of underlying managerial assumptions and

46

understandings. It is a more subtle form of professional knowledge, involving a high
degree of internalized knowledge and merged experiential information. Wenger states:

A concept of practice includes both the explicit and the tacit. It includes

what is said and what is left unsaid; what is represented and what is

assumed. It includes the language, tools, documents, images, symbols,

well-deﬁned roles, speciﬁed criteria, codiﬁed procedures, regulations, and

contracts that various practices make explicit for a variety of purposes.

But it also includes all the implicit relations, tacit conventions, subtle cues,

untold rules of thumb, recognizable intuitions, speciﬁc perceptions,

well-tuned sensitivities, embodied understandings, underlying assumptions,

and shared world views. Most of these may never be articulated, yet they are

unmistakable signs of membership in communities of practice and are

crucial to the success of their enterprises. (Wenger, 1998, p. 47)

A growing consensus in the literature of management suggests a knowledge-based
view of organizations which recognizes the combined knowledge capacities of
individuals within the ﬁrm (Grant 1998). In biotechnology ﬁrms, scientists represent the
specialized knowledge that provides the impetus for scientiﬁc discovery and innovation.
Managers in biotech ﬁrms have responsibility for the strategic insights that foster new
product development, build alliances, and promote commercialization. The interaction of
these “shared systems of intelligibility” (Gergen and Gergen 1991) creates the context for
the ﬁrm’s sustainability. Sustainability may be linked to the development and renewal of
“core competencies”, according to Prahalad and Hamel (1990). They deﬁne core
competencies as “the collective learning in the organization, especially how to coordinate
diverse production skills and integrate multiple streams of technologies” (Prahalad and
Hamel 1990, p. 82). If, in alignment with Prahalad and Hamel, the development of

organizational competencies is enhanced by learning that is collective, then

organizational capabilities are integrally linked to managerial knowledge and learning.

47

The social constructivist framework of this study suggests that knowledge is
constructed as a response to the real world, invented and re-invented as a product of
social interaction and processes. Theories of learning that emphasize learning as a social
activity include experiential learning, social learning theory, workplace learning, and
situated learning. The literature of management is increasingly concerned with collective
experience and learning, particularly knowledge management and organizational
learning. Because the managers and scientists who participated in the study were engaged
in the interpretation and construction of the managerial role within the context of the
biotechnology industry, the social constructivist approach was chosen as a particularly
appropriate paradigm for discussion.

The concept of managerial knowledge suggests that it is the social construction of
the experiences, patterns of meaning, and learning of individuals. If management is a
socially constructed role, the role of manager is as the interpreter and actor in
organizational processes. This suggests that it is vital to understand the managerial role
from the perspective of the actor. What are the mental models that managers and
scientists in life science ﬁrms attribute to the managerial role? How is the managerial
experience shaped by the environment in which it occurs? What inﬂuences the
perspectives of managers and how do they learn to be managers? How do managers
construct their roles, and what is an efﬁcacious management style in the intenSive and
accelerated conditions of life science ﬁrms? These questions were central to the study
and provided the impetus for a number of deeply interesting and engaging interviews

with scientists and managers.

48

The study focused on managerial knowledge and learning in biotechnology ﬁrms
from the perspective of scientists and managers involved in the biotechnology industry.
The phenomenon of management and the concept of managerial competencies were
explored in interviews with scientists and managers. The managerial role, its
development, and the challenges of management in biotechnology ﬁrms in relation to the
scientiﬁc enterprise were examined through a study design based on the grounded theory
approach. Grounded theory research offers a framework that allows theory to emerge
and develop through the discovery, classiﬁcation, and interpretation of data (Strauss and
Corbin 1998).

The methodology of grounded theory suggests an approach that examines the
development of themes relating to a central concept. This includes the organization of
data in order to identify categories and subcategories that are “conceptually similar in
nature or related in meaning” (Strauss and Corbin 1998, p. 102). Data analysis is an
integral aspect of grounded theory research, following Strauss and Corbin’s description
of “microanalysis”, the “very careful, often minute examination and interpretation of
data.” (Strauss and Corbin 1998, p. 38). Transcripts of the tape-recorded interviews
assisted in the analysis, emphasizing the importance of concentrating on the data as
presented by the participants. The transcripts were developed and analyzed as interviews
continued.

In scanning the data for comparative themes, relationships, and concepts, and then
examining the data more thoroughly using systematic procedures, Strauss and Corbin
suggest that theory building can evolve as data collection continues.

Our way to building theory is not just to work with a single case, then
proceed to the next one and treat it as a separate case, and so on.

49

Rather, we want to know what this case teaches us about other cases.

We want to move from the speciﬁc to the more general. Therefore we use

a case to open up our minds to the range of possible meanings, properties,

dimensions, and relationships inherent in any bit of data. (1998, p. 88)

Strauss and Corbin describe very speciﬁc techniques for data collection and
analysis, and delineate the steps in theory building. They emphasize the critical
importance of asking questions that will assist in the development of theory as well as
continuous analysis throughout the data collection process.

We are interested not in how many individuals exhibit this concept

but rather how Often this concept emerges and what it looks like

(i.e., its properties) under varying conditions.

(Strauss and Corbin 1998, p. 95)

The data collection and analysis followed speciﬁc techniques for coding the
transcripts to provide “analytic distance”. (p. 66) The coding of material occurred as
notes when the researcher listened to the taped interviews and then began to type the
transcripts. A series of initial categories developed which were examined and compared
to further understand any relationships between them. These “open” and “axial” coding
techniques offered a straightforward approach for analyzing the many pages of interview
transcripts and moving toward the construction of major descriptive categories. The
concept of managerial knowledge was found to be a central platform that related to all
major categories as identiﬁed by the participants. A central category, as deﬁned by
Strauss and Corbin, has “analytic power”, suggesting that “what gives it that power is its
ability to pull the other categories together to form an explanatory whole” (p. 146).

The interviews with managers and scientists who participated in the study were

instrumental in developing the constructs of managerial knowledge and learning. As

participants in biotechnology ﬁrms, they were engaged in and observed the construction

50

of managerial knowledge and the characteristics for effective management. They
described and deﬁned the tools of successful management in terms of the skills,
requirements, and environment of biotechnology ﬁrms. In doing so, the participants
suggested an interpretation of managerial competencies embedded in a particular set of
managerial knowledge.

The research questions were based on the following propositions.

0 Management of biotechnology ﬁrms takes place in highly
competitive and changing conditions, contingent upon the efficient and
effective use of scientiﬁc and managerial knowledge.

0 While biotechnology ﬁrms are dependent upon the intersection of
scientiﬁc and managerial knowledge, little is known about the role Of
management and the managerial competencies needed in the environment of
biotechnology.

o A further understanding of the managerial role in biotechnology
ﬁrms may offer insights regarding the managerial role and its development
not only in biotechnology ﬁrms, but also in other environments.

The study of the managerial role in biotechnology ﬁrms provided a context for
managerial perspectives from managers and scientists distinguished by its pace and its
dependence on scientiﬁc knowledge. Categories and subcategories were derived from the
interviews with biotechnology managers. Five major categories related to managerial
knowledge were identiﬁed as close examination of the transcripts took place. Early

substantive impressions were noted after approximately half the interviews had been

51

completed and transcribed and began to form the basis for subsequent coding, category
identiﬁcation, and theory development as data analysis continued.

The research approach of taping and transcribing the interviews emanated from an
interest in obtaining a detailed account of the participants’ observations in their own
words. This was particularly important because the concept of managerial knowledge
suggests that it is a social construction of the experiences, patterns of meaning, and
learning of individuals. The interview protocol was conceived to elicit responses that
would allow for participants’ understandings of successful management practices, their
personal interpretations and managerial beliefs, and the less explicit, more tacit aspects of
managerial work.

The research protocol was formed through discussions and pilot interviews with
several research managers and scientists not associated with the study. It was developed
to be cognizant of the time constraints of busy research scientists and biotechnology
managers and sensitive to company proprietary information. The managers and scientists
who participated in the study responded to six key questions that focused on three areas
determined to be integral to the study. These included questions regarding: 1) qualities
and abilities considered by the participant to be important for success in a life science
ﬁrm, 2) the concerns and challenges of management in biotechnology ﬁrms, 3) the
relationship of management and science in life science ﬁrms.

Participants represented a number of biotechnology companies based in
Michigan. They were employed by ﬁrms that specialize in human and animal health
issues, agricultural products, diagnostics, pharmaceuticals, and research equipment

manufacturers. The interview participants included sixteen managers and scientists from

52

thirteen biotechnology ﬁrms and three executives from three venture capitalist
companies. Letters to potential participants describing the research study were sent
several weeks prior to contacting the participant by phone. Most interviews were
conducted in the participants’ ofﬁces, although two were conducted in the researcher’s
ofﬁce. Interviews of approximately one hour were taped and transcribed by the
researcher. All interviews with the scientists and managers were transcribed, while the
venture capitalist interviews were reviewed and summarized.

Several of the nineteen participants were founders or co-founders of their
companies. Others were chief executive ofﬁcers, senior scientists, or research directors.
Most were Ph.D. scientists who had assumed managerial responsibilities, two were
managers who did not have a scientiﬁc background, and three held primarily scientiﬁc
roles in their companies. Of the scientist and scientist-managers, eleven held Ph.D.s in
various ﬁelds: molecular biology, microbiology, biochemistry, plant pathology, and
organic chemistry. Six of the scientist-managers had responsibilities that involved a fair
amount of time in the laboratory, overseeing projects or executing experiments. Two
participants had completed undergraduate degrees in science and had not pursued
graduate work, and one of the participants was a physician. Only two managers did not
have backgrounds in science, and one did not hold an undergraduate degree, but had a
technical two year degree. Several had formal business training, including three with the
MBA or equivalent and two who were enrolled in MBA programs at the time of the
interviews. Two of the three venture capitalists had science backgrounds. The
participants included three females and sixteen males, and four non-Caucasian or

international respondents.

53

Data collection took place over a four-month period. A database of Michigan-
based ﬁrms was created from membership listings in biotechnology organizations,
national biotechnology directories, referrals from members of the scientiﬁc community,
and the Internet. The decision to focus on participants from Michigan-based ﬁrms was
determined on the basis of two factors. The state of Michigan had recently appropriated
considerable funding toward increased research in biotechnology applications and a “life
sciences corridor” extending between several research universities and research institutes.
Additionally, the researcher is located in Michigan and associated with graduate
management education in the college of business at a research university. The topic of
managerial knowledge and effective management of biotechnology ﬁrms appeared
particularly appropriate and interesting given these circumstances.

The companies in which the participants worked ranged in size from as few as
ﬁve employees to a division of a global pharmaceutical corporation. Most of the
companies were small in terms of human resources. Nine of the thirteen ﬁrms had less
than ﬁfty employees, and of those, ﬁve had fewer than ten employees. At all ﬁrms, a
signiﬁcant number of employees were in scientiﬁc or technical roles. This was especially
true in the small ﬁrms, where the smaller the size, the greater number of laboratory-based
personnel. Most of the ﬁrms were privately held, and although several participants
discussed the possibility of initial public offerings, only three were publicly traded. Most
Of the ﬁrms had been operating a relatively short period of time. Six ﬁrms were true start-
ups, with three or less years in business. One ﬁrm was established for only ﬁve months at
the time of the interview. Five were formed less than seventeen years ago, two ﬁrms had

incorporated more than forty years ago.

54

The settings in which the ﬁrms Operated varied from a gated, high-security
environment to virtual businesses. In one business, the company ofﬁcers meet in their
homes or local restaurants. In another, the company operated only a laboratory with
scientists and no administrative space. Several were located in research parks or
commercial strip businesses. Others were so small that the company president doubled as
the receptionist and purchasing agent. Some had research facilities elsewhere, within
close proximity, or, in several cases, had partner companies elsewhere in the US. or at
international locations. A number of ﬁrms had afﬁliations with universities and university
researchers, government entities such as the National Institutes of Health, and alliances
with suppliers and customer groups.

The research questions asked participants to describe the qualities, attributes, and
skills that a successful managers and scientists in biotechnology ﬁrms need to have, the
challenges that biotechnology managers and scientists faced in their work, the acquisition
and development of managerial knowledge for biotechnology managers, and the mutual
areas of concern shared by managers and scientiﬁc staff in biotechnology ﬁrms. The
researcher sought participants’ responses to the following inquiries. What are the
managerial competency and knowledge needs of biotechnology ﬁrms? How do managers
and scientists understand the managerial role and its relationship to the scientiﬁc
enterprise? How do descriptions of managerial competencies and development by
scientists and managers compare with the theories of management and theories of
learning in the educational literature? How is managerial knowledge understood and

shared within the organization?

55

In the interview process, the use of the word “success” was chosen because of its
subjective and open-ended qualities. In doing so, the researcher wanted to elicit
comments that would provide further insights regarding effective management in life
science ﬁrms. The deﬁnition of success in a biotechnology ﬁrm was examined from the
perspective of the manager as well as the perspective of the research scientist. What is the
deﬁnition of success in each role? What are the components of the managerial role, its
qualities, skill sets, and its competencies? How does it interact with the scientiﬁc role?
And what are successful qualities for the scientist in life science ﬁrms? Are there
similarities, and what are the differences?

Similarly, the use of the word “challenge” was considered to be an important
indicator for understanding the environment of life sciences. Was the environment in
which participants worked perceived to be difﬁcult, competitive, and fast-paced? How
did they describe the challenges that they faced, and that of their ﬁrms? How did they
understand the biotechnology environment, its issues and concerns? How did that impact
their work, their interpretation of the management in life science ﬁrms, and the role of the
manager? What were their perceptions of the current and future challenges that their
ﬁrms faced?

What the managers and scientists described was a combination of management
practices and constructs that they associated with good management. Frequently, they
described their own management philosophies and inﬂuences. Often, the managerial role
was juxtaposed with the scientiﬁc role because of the backgrounds of most of the
participants. The interpretation of management as a capacity that was superimposed on

the original scientiﬁc role became a familiar image that participants identiﬁed in a

56

number of interviews. Thus, for most participants, their scientiﬁc backgrounds were
integrally linked with their managerial development and identity, and the interaction
between these roles informed the construction of the managerial role.

An inquiry into the phenomenon of management within the common setting of
biotechnology ﬁrms may allow for the development of new understandings of the
managerial role. A growing body of literature suggests that new competencies and skills
will be needed for the manager of the future. A number of studies have suggested that
new, restructured, and global organizational arrangements require different managerial
qualities than previously needed. At the same time, the literature of management
increasingly recognizes a knowledge-based view of the organization, which recognizes
the combined knowledge capacities of individuals within the ﬁrm. The emphasis on
shared knowledge inﬂuencing and enhancing ﬁrm capabilities appears to be particularly
relevant for knowledge-intensive ﬁrms such as biotechnology organizations. The urgent,
competitive, and emerging nature of biotechnology ﬁrms, and their relatively small size,

may offer optimal conditions for the study of managerial knowledge and learning.

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Chapter Four
The Construction and Interpretation of Managerial Knowledge:
The Results of the Study

The transcripts of the interviews suggested an interpretation of the managerial
role as embedded in managerial knowledge and its development. The managers and
scientists who were interviewed were deﬁning what it means to be a manager in the life
science environment. They were engaged in the construction of managerial knowledge
and what managerial characteristics were useful and effective in their businesses. The
concept of managerial knowledge and learning was found to be a central platform which
related to all major categories identiﬁed by the participants.

The next section of the results provides detailed descriptions of the categories that
emerged from the data. These include themes of entrepreneurship, adaptability,
timeliness, collaboration, and knowledge integration. A separate area describes the
development of managerial learning. All of these categories are factors in the descriptions
of managerial knowledge as related by the participants in the study. Yet to describe the
categories in detail without developing the setting for the life sciences industry would not
recognize the critical inﬂuence of science, scientiﬁc thought, and scientiﬁc change on
management in the life sciences.

Discussion of the continuous evolution of scientiﬁc thought and change in the
sciences that affect the biotechnology industry were pervasive themes throughout the
interviews and provided the context for understanding managerial knowledge in the
emerging environment of life science ﬁrms. Several questions focused on change and

challenges in the life sciences industry, and offered a venue for most participants to

provide their perspectives on science and its relationship to the management of life

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sciences ﬁrms. Because an understanding of science and its relationship to management
forms a crucial aspect of the research, a discussion of the environment of the life sciences
begins this chapter of the results of the study. In citing text from the interviews,
participants are coded as R1-R19 to ensure conﬁdentiality.

The Environment of the Life Sciences Industry

For the scientists and managers within life science ﬁrms, the experience of
management is shaped by the parameters of scientiﬁc knowledge and its expression.
Because most of the participants had been employed in academic laboratories,
commercial research, or life sciences ﬁrms their entire professional lives, it is important
to acknowledge the inﬂuence of science in participants’ interpretations of the managerial
role. The managerial role in biotechnology ﬁrms cannot be studied in isolation of the
science, since it owes its existence to the science. Participants suggested a strong
relationship between management and the nature of science, discussed recent changes in
the sciences, and the role of the scientist. This section of the results provides an overview
of the environment of the life sciences industry, as ascertained in the interviews with the
participants of the study.

The life sciences environment is characterized by experimentation and innovation
based on scientiﬁc inquiry, and the setting in which science takes place in life science
ﬁrms is frequently one of uncertainty and contingencies. Life science processes are
subject to many variables and dependent upon organic processes, and scientiﬁc
experimentation and innovation may result in unanticipated consequences and
discoveries. Because the basis of science is inquiry, even though the scientiﬁc process

builds on rational, measured processes and sequential steps, there is an element of the

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unknown to the scientiﬁc endeavor. Yet science is the omnipresent force of the life
sciences industry, and often determines its direction and success.

The inﬂuence of scientiﬁc research and development efforts on ﬁrm strategy was
discussed by a number of participants.

Research and development is our whole budget... Right now, the
science is driving most of our management processes. Because many
times, every time you make a big decision, we’re at a crossroads...
And it all depends on what we develop and how we develop it.

In many ways, all the possibilities will come to fruition, it just
depends on how fast we can get the science done to develop certain
products over others. (R9, p. 7)

Most of the people we have studied science at one point or another.
And so I think that’s a fundamental. I guess you can acquire an
appreciation, but somehow you need to acquire it. So you need to
understand how science works, because science is what drives the
business. ...You know, the science either works or doesn’t work.
And that’s basically what the bottom line is. (R1, p. 11)

Because science is what we’re all about, the research function

is extremely important, and needs to be funded. There’s a lot of

truth to the fact that you’re as good as how much money you put

back into R&D. And because...l don’t know this for a fact, but this

has to be like any other company, where you have to have products

in the pipeline, and products in the research table, and products out

in the marketplace chugging along. And the only way to get that is

with a pretty robust research department in any company. And in

this kind of industry the research is more massive. (R7, p. 15)

The research that is the basis for biotechnology ﬁrms draws from a number of
disciplines and represents a paradigm shift that has taken place within the past twenty
years in the sciences and the scientiﬁc community. The change emanates from the
explosion of scientiﬁc knowledge, resulting in a trend toward specialization as well as the

need to bring various disciplinary knowledge and skill sets to bear on biological

problems.

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Twenty years ago it was reasonably possible to have a good basic
understanding of a very very broad area of science. The evolution

of our understanding of science and the complexities that go along

with that have also squeezed that into more narrow areas for people.

It’s impossible now with the breadth of knowledge and the rapidity

with which science is advancing in any area, particularly in medicine

and the understanding of disease mechanisms, and molecular mechanisms
and so forth. It is virtually impossible for someone to be broad-based and
conversant with enough of the information in many areas to be able to ﬁt
into an organization. People have been forced to specialize by the
explosion of information and opportunity out there in science. (R14, p. 10)

Coincidentally, the scientiﬁc changes that have created a need for disciplinary
experts also created a need to transcend disciplinary boundaries. In biotechnology, this
need often requires the merging of scientiﬁc talents on multidisciplinary teams and
borrowing from other science and technology ﬁelds.

You have more and more integration. The ﬁelds are becoming more
and more blurred. As to this is anatomy, this is physiology, this is
biochemistry. Everything is now starting to interlock. Which actually
makes sense. It’s a whole organism. You aren’t just building block
xy and 2. They’re all interconnected. And so now I see a research
scientist having to have a more global view of all the sciences. Not
just being specialized in one ﬁeld. Because you’ll be left behind
sooner or later. You have to know how your ﬁeld interacts with
related ﬁelds. And how it ﬁts into the big picture. (R9, p. 17)

The transition from singular approaches to biological problems to
multidisciplinary advances occurred rapidly after the DNA discoveries of the 1970’s,
merging information from many experiments, many ﬁelds, and many experts. For several
participants, this changed the concept of science from an individual and isolated endeavor
to a far more complex and enriched experience.

Back in the 1980’s I think there was a far more clear distinction between

different disciplines. If you studied genetics you were a geneticist, you

used tools of genetics, that was your domain, that was your discipline.

If you were a molecular biologist, that’s what you did. I think that in the

‘803 it was quickly realized that these neatly grouped biological disciplines
were really part of a greater whole. And geneticists could beneﬁt from

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using the tools of molecular biology. And molecular biologists, on the
other hand, would require the use of the tools of genetics. So they merged
together. (R1, p. 19)

And then there’s another one which would be genomics, and genomics

is a newer area but you know...nomic means whole, so it’s an approach
that’s coming out in biology which is trying to look more at the whole
rather than reducing things down to their base elements or building blocks.
We really need to think about larger network complexity and we haven’t
been doing that for the last decades. We’ve been documenting detail.

But now most of us are slamming up against the wall and realizing that just
documenting detail is not going to give us the answers. (R17, p. 2)

One participant used the analogy of “tools” in regard to the various scientiﬁc
disciplines and skills and the merger of disciplines to a “toolbox”.

The ﬁelds have really been connected, and there’s this toolbox of
techniques, of technologies that you could use to study a biological
project. And, in fact, that usually is the best approach: to try several
different tools and techniques to really understand and move forward
rather than trying to hammer it with one type of tool. (R1, p. 19)

The tools are being combined with information technologies for greater focus and
more encompassing life sciences strategies.

Now with information technology more and more of the results

are actually compiled in the data bases. And those databases are
now being, what’s called “data-mined” for mega-information

which is combining information from multiple experiments,

being done by multiple people. To try and come up with general
insights about a much bigger piece of the biological picture.

We kind of have this toolbox emergence that combined

the life sciences ﬁeld into one more or less uniﬁed whole. There

are still specialists in the ﬁeld but in terms of the techniques

they all ﬂow from one box to the other. And it is really the
information technology that has allowed capturing the data so that it
is accessible to a far larger pool of scientists. So that is tremendously
exciting. (R1, p. 19)

The impact of the ﬁeld of information technology on the life sciences is one
example of the change that has taken place in the sciences. Tools from engineering are

also creating the platform for biotechnology, including robotics and other manufacturing

62

technologies. The combination of these technology-based, multidisciplinary processes in
the life sciences is, according to one participant, “creating a new science” (R16, p. 13).

Our scientists are having to come up with the protocols and the way

that the science is going to go, to educate a new person into this science.

Both with the use of the instrumentation and with the science itself.

Our base of customers has become much more diverse and a much larger
customer base than it was ﬁve years ago. DNA wasn’t even talked about.
Proteomics ﬁve years ago was unheard of. And now we’re distributing
product all over the world to all kinds of different customer bases. (R16, p. 13)

The new possibilities in science may mean combining hardware and software
applications for solutions to the biological dilemmas posed by clients. One participant
described how his ﬁrm often operated ahead of known scientiﬁc techniques, and his role
in familiarizing even the most erudite scientists and scientist-managers with new
processes.

For the ﬁrst six months it was basically just talking to people because

they’d heard about this but didn’t really understand what was involved.

And just convincing people that the stuff really did exist and was possible.

Now it’s more educational in terms of, people know about it, they’re

excited about it, but don’t have a clue about what’s involved and how to

set it up. Because what you’re doing is tying together some very very

diverse areas in science and technology. (R13, p. 8)

Creating new scientiﬁc understandings through biotechnology can produce
skepticism and confusion among potential clients. One participant described the way that
clients approached his company’s high-perforrning product as a highly improbable
commodity, a suspicious “snake oil” concoction, without a rigorous scientiﬁc basis.

...our product does that magic. But it does it legitimately and consistently.

And you walk in and you start talking about (the product) and until people

become familiar with it and touch and feel it, the ﬁrst thing they think

is snake oil. And so we’ve had some real challenges to educate people.

(R2, pp. 13-14)

For biotechnology ﬁrms presenting leading strategies, the creation of a new science

63

and its acceptance in the marketplace was frequently described as a challenging task.

The multidisciplinary nature of biotechnology and emerging scientiﬁc knowledge
inﬂuence the management of the science, creating challenges not only for scientists,
but also for managers in life science ﬁrms. These realities underpin the biotechnology
manager’s decisions and direction.

When you deal in life sciences, you’re dealing with living organisms.

They may produce something that you do, or they may be bad and

you want to know whether they’re there, and so what you have to be able

to understand and appreciate is that no organism, man or bacteria, acts the

same way every day every hour in similar conditions. Conditions change

and organisms change. Not necessarily genetically, but in response to their

environment. So if you want to produce something this year you may

produce it and it’s just wonderful production. You get umpteen bushels per

acre, or milligrams of antibodies, or whatever it is you’re producing. Next

month or next year it may be less or it may be more. But it’s never going to be

exactly the same. SO it’s very difficult for businessmen to understand this
concept...And the life scientist understands that you can’t have that exactitude.

And he has to try to condition the businessman that we have to work within

ranges, not exactness. (R3, p. 10)

The environment of the life sciences portrayed by the participants involves a
rapidly expanding scientiﬁc perspective within an evolving industry. In small
biotechnology ﬁrms, the demands of science are juxtaposed with an emphasis on
competition and proﬁt.

The science is a pervasive aspect of the business of biotechnology, capable of
enormous possibilities but also producing considerable constraints and undeniable risks.
The evolving multidisciplinary nature of science in biotechnology creates an environment
which challenges conventional solutions to both scientiﬁc and managerial issues. In this

next area of the results, each of the categories that contributed to the central category of

managerial knowledge and learning are discussed: entrepreneurship, adaptabilty,

64

timeliness, collaboration, and knowledge integration, including knowledge management,
knowledge development, and knowledge diffusion.
Entrepreneurship

In the life sciences industry, the category of entrepreneurship conveys aspects of
managerial knowledge that involve managers and others taking on increased
responsibilities and operating in boundary-Spanning roles for company promotion and
growth. The entrepreneurial perspective espoused by participants includes an overriding
interest in ﬁrm success and innovation within the often precarious and competitive life
sciences environment. The terms that participants used in describing their work
exempliﬁed the spirit of entrepreneurship, speaking of their endeavors as “exciting”,
“fun”, and “risk-taking”, in having the opportunity to launch a new business.

Importantly, the scientist’s familiarity with failure, through scientiﬁc challenges
and unsuccessﬁrl experiments and hypotheses, several participants suggested, was similar
to the skill sets needed by managers and entrepreneurs. One biotechnology manager
observed:

To be a successful scientist, you have to be willing to fail most of the

time...When you do research, things don’t always work...Experiments that

fail and have been well designed, the negative data tells you something. If an

experiment is poorly designed, if the controls are not there, the negative data

might not tell you anything. And then it’s just a grand waste of time.”

(R8, p. 8)

The subcategory of commitment describes a signiﬁcant factor in the
entrepreneurial vision of life science managers. In many cases, life science ﬁrms

represent the entrepreneurial ventures of a few people and require enormous amounts of

commitment and time. Discoveries and product breakthroughs often involve dedication to

65

a work cycle that meets scientiﬁc needs rather than typical Monday-Friday daytime work
schedules.

I think that biotech is an unstable enough of an environment that

very rarely do people say, okay, I’m going to come here and come in at

8 o’clock, start doing science, and by 5 O’clock I’m done, I’m going home.

And do science all day and not talk to my colleagues and work together

with them to ﬁgure out how to create a product. Most of the people I meet

are intensely interested in the process they are in. (R1, p. 16)

It’s not a 9 to 5 job. It’s almost a 24-hour job. You think about

most of the stuff scientiﬁcally all the time. So it’s hard to put a timing

on it. here the ideas come to you at all different times and you’re

trying to solve problems. SO you can’t really talk about how many

hours you work. Lord knows how many hours you work in a week. (R10, p. 9)

You have to be willing to work hard, and work long hours. This is my

fourth start-up company. I’m forty-one years old, I feel like I’m about sixty
sometimes because of the hours we work. But it’s rewarding. It’s a lot of fun.

(R6, p. 4)

The opportunity to move a new company forward and inﬂuence the direction of a
product or implement innovations proved to be an attractive alternative than working in a
large pharmaceutical ﬁrm or a university environment for a number of participants. As
entrepreneurs, life science managers were able to guide a start-up company, to hire its
initial personnel, and shape its future. Some were involved in the initial public offering of
stock and critical aspects of ﬁrm strategy. “Part of what attracts people to biotech is that
there’s tremendous opportunities within these organizations to put your own imprint on
what’s going on. And to advance rapidly.” (R13, p. 13)

The exhilaration of being a part of a business venture from its earliest beginnings
offered additional momentum for several scientists who became managers. One manager
enthusiastically described his current experience in directing a company as “living on the

edge” and, in his view, the natural entrepreneurial qualities of scientists.

66

There’s certainly more balls to juggle. There’s certainly more balls
to juggle.And many more issues. But God, is it better.

LM: Why is it better?
It’s more fun.

LM: You think so?
Yeah.

LM: Why?

Starting something new. And I’m speaking personally. Starting something
new is just the way to go. Starting this new, this was from scratch. Ordering
paper towels and phone lines, full of empty walls. And to see it grow, there’s
nothing like it. I haven’t regretted it for a minute, making that move. And it’s
much more fun to be on the edge that you could fail miserably, or you could
succeed wildly. And you just don't have that chance at some places. Because
there’s always this big net, this big structure. You could go someplace else if
things don’t work out. But most of us ﬁnd it more fun. When we started it was
let’s give it a shot, you know, we have a bit of a...of an entrepreneurial, risk-
taking attitude toward things. But that ties in because of your training where in
most cases, when you move from a place or you start your Ph.D. work or your
post-doc work, or you go to a new lab, you basically have three places where
you have to start over. And you’re starting mostly from scratch, except you
have your technical expertise. But you’re bringing people in, designing the
program and the study projects. You are by nature, you have to be
entrepreneurial, I think, if you’re going to be successful in science. And
you’ve got to have a bit of a risk-taking attitude. But it’s a different kind

of risk-taking scientiﬁcally, than, as in this case, ﬁnancially. You know,
whether you’re going to pull this off or you just have to get another job.

It may not work. But you know, that’s the way it goes.

(R10, p. 5)

Although the participants were all well-qualiﬁed scientists and managers who

could choose to work in any number of laboratory or managerial environments, they had

made a commitment to small life sciences ﬁrms. Firms that were, in many cases, not

well-funded and in early stages of development. The choice to work at small life

sciences ﬁrms was a clear career decision for most of them, they suggested, because the

67

work offered them options that they did not have elsewhere. Among the differences they
discussed was the ability to be involved in very creative scientiﬁc processes, to see
projects to completion, and to personally direct a vision, whether it was scientiﬁc in
nature or managerially-based.

The ability for those in biotechnology ﬁrms to be with a group of like-minded
individuals and to soar creatively was commonly expressed by participants.

In this setting... you’re working with people who are very creative.

Everybody has a background in science, wherein creativity is the

backbone of the whole thing. When you ﬁrst learn about these people,

you take an introductory biology or chemistry class, and the professors

will always try to turn on light bulbs by talking about people who have
had these wonderful breakthroughs. And I think that kind of impression

that you can pick up from learning about the people who have made the

startling or the innovative things is, you know, that kind of leads people

into thinking creatively. And attempting to think outside the box at all

times. (R8, p. 5)

As a venture capitalist stated:

You go to a biotech, they’re usually focused on one or two products.

The whole company is focused on it. They know that if they don’t get

these studies done, they don’t have a paycheck. So it’s a lot different than

in a big pharma. You’ve got to be entrepreneurial, you’ve got to be focused.

You’ve got to be willing to work long hours. These guys work twenty four

hours a day. On the hope that their compound makes it and they’ll make it big.

(R15)

To be entrepreneurial connotes a high involvement with a vision, a commitment,
and going beyond the normal parameters of one’s professional role. Entrepreneurship as
it is portrayed here does not suggest simply managing and producing a product, but rather
a mentality that takes charge of a project and moves it forward. A sense of passion about
one’s work is suggested, as well as a compelling interest and pride. One research

manager stated, “Well one of the things, it’s not too surprising, that scientists do, is that

they fall in love with their idea, and that’s happened to me many times.” (R8, p. 7)

68

The concept of commitment and enthusiasm toward one’s work was shared by
both scientists and managers. The dichotomy that can occur between the roles and
challenges of the scientist-manager was also addressed.

I think it’s really important to say to stand up for an idea and say, this is

really worth following, and somebody needs to represent that idea. At the

same time, somebody needs to be able to say, we have to balance our

budget, we have to mind the resources, we have to make sure that the

overhead is covered and things like that. Were both of those functions

to be subsumed within one individual means that you’d have to be able

to turn one on and turn one off. Which requires, I think, a fair amount of
awareness about where you are within that process. Right now I’m a research
scientist and I look at data and I have this model of how this part of the universe
might work, and I’m trying to give evidence for it. And another time I’m looking
at the resources we have and at some point my own project is going to take a hit.
So I’m going to have to be able to prepare myself for that and not become too
emotionally tied to it. So I think you have to kind of let yourself be, if not
schizophrenic about it, at least separate that into two compartments. (R8, p. 8)

The sheer enjoyment of science and its utility provided a continuous theme
throughout the interviews. But integral to that enjoyment, participants often suggested,
were other considerations related to social responsibility and humanitarian issues. A
scientist who is both an academician and an entrepreneur of his own company discussed
his need to create products that would beneﬁt others.

I love my research. But at the same time, I want to see my research do
something useful. That is my ultimate goal. I tell my students, when

they start a project, the ﬁrst thing I tell them is listen, you can have any

great and creative ideas. But ask yourself a question. Where will your
research take you?...Can it lead into something from which people can
beneﬁt? I would rather have a one year delay on my publication if I
discover something to combat AIDS. How could I not wait one year?

Can I help people? That is the question you have to ask. ...There are certain
things as a human being we should do for the community. Not always to make
money, you know...But, you know, as a scientist, I think we all have a bit of an
obligation you know. (R5, pp. 10, 11)

The aspect of doing work that beneﬁted humanity was mentioned by a number of

participants: through drug discovery, plant products that eliminated the need for

69

pesticides, or diagnostic tools for diseases. Participants discussed the need for scientiﬁc
rigor in human health products and expressed concern for the consumers of their
products.

You can’t cut comers. So you have to be quality-driven. And you have

to be driven to think what are the level of proof that I need to take this

project through? In order to demonstrate that I have a drug here that I

could give to my grandmother. (R1, p. 15)

Everybody wants meaning. Everybody’s searching for meaning....Can

they derive meaning from their work, can they do something signiﬁcant?

And so in life science, it’s a little easier to see that tangibly. For instance,

well, we’re developing a drug that will improve the quality of life of

somebody, or may extend their life by a couple years so maybe they can

see their daughter’s wedding or something like that. (R10, p. 8)

In building their entrepreneurial vision Of the ﬁrm, their department, or their
scientiﬁc team, managers build relationships between individuals and alliances with other
ﬁrms. They also help foster other entrepreneurial thinking that will assist in getting
products to market and new discoveries. A number of participants, for instance, have
research agreements with university scientists or contracts with universities or other
companies to produce materials for them. In several cases, participants discussed their
interest in further afﬁliations with other ﬁrms and the use of database management
systems to communicate discoveries and exchange information.

As entrepreneurs, managers in small biotechnology ﬁrms Often have to reach out
to form alliances to ﬁll company information or technology gaps. Partnerships between
biotechnology ﬁrms and other entities may include supplier alliances for technology and
materials, contract laboratories, or service organizations that provide networks for new

products. One manager described an arrangement that her ﬁrm has with a university.

We develop chips for them, and they develop libraries of genes and
proteomics for us. We have mutual agreements with these different facilities

70

so that our scientists are available to them, and vice versa. We provide them
with instrumentation, they provide us with DNA. Things like that. (R16, p. 13)

Another biotechnology manager suggested the necessity of inter-ﬁrm alliances:

As a small company, you can only focus in on a piece. We started out in

ag (agriculture) because that’s a pretty big piece. We could be a very

successful company with our product as successful as we believe it will be

in the marketplace, without those other afﬁliations. But we have partnering

relationships with companies to develop pre-mixed formulations, we have

partnering relationships for applications in horticulture, in hydroponic

systems, we have partnerships for developing product for international

markets, all of that has to be done in parallel. In my opinion, you can’t

do it all yourself. (R2, p. 18)

Affiliations between small biotechnology ﬁrms and large pharmaceutical
companies create synergies that allow the pharmaceuticals more options. The
biotechnology ﬁrm, in this case, becomes the supplier industry. For the pharmaceutical
ﬁrm, such an arrangement offers a way to acquire technology and foster new product
development without making the investment in-house. Rather than building an
infrastructure to support development of a new medication, the pharmaceutical manager
may look for enterprising life science ﬁrms focusing on strategies for curing a particular
disease. Or, in other cases, the biotechnology manager may contact other ﬁrms with
likely interests in their product.

One pharmaceutical manager who works with biotechnology ﬁrms described it in
terms of a “make or buy” framework: buying services or products from biotechs versus
making them using pharmaceutical resources.

Decisions are less ﬁnal when you have these partnering opportunities to

ﬁx decisions that you couldn’t make because of lack of resources, or you

couldn’t make because you just didn’t have the vision. And that’s very

valuable. That decreases our risk considerably, in terms of our research
world. (R1, p. 23)

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The number and frequency of these inter-ﬁrm alliances suggest the category of
adaptability that most biotechnology managers described. In aligning with academic
scientists to produce new technologies, managers Of life science ﬁrms may have the
ability move more quickly than larger ﬁrms and gain the competitive advantage that is
critical to ﬁrm success.

One aspect that the biotechnology industry serves exceedingly well

is that many of them take what I would say embryonic technology

from academic institutions. And they invest money into technology

and combine it. Right now, one of the key issues is this combination

of engineering, information technology, and biology. So they are much
better equipped at developing enabling technology, and then partnering it
with pharmaceutical companies. (R1, p. 24)

The need for biotechnology managers to possess a competitive spirit and a
tenacious attitude were identiﬁed by several participants. When asked what qualities a
successﬁrl biotechnology manager should have, one participant responded as follows.

Intestinal fortitude. And the reason I say that is that you have to have
discipline, you have to have the mind set that you’re going to stick this out,
you’re going to be successﬁrl regardless of the obstacles, you’re going to
make this thing happen. I’ve seen where folks have actually changed focus
and direction based upon political pressure or fear or being unsure of
themselves. And I think a good manager has the ability to endure the

short term changes that you may see with an eye on the long term focus.

If he can establish a long term focus and not pay too much attention to the
variations by quarter, or in some companies, by month, he’ll be okay.

So there’s a lot of, in my Opinion, there’s the ability to stay focused,

to stay committed, to endure the hardships, to have the respect of your

people and for them to have your respect as well. And then constant
communication with those around you in terms of the strategy, the focus. And
leave them alone, it’s a real big thing that we feel is absolutely critical. (R11, p. 5)

For this manager and others, the potential volatility of the life sciences industry could be
balanced by taking a long-term perspective, maintaining effective relationships, and

intense focus on the product and ﬁrm proﬁtability.

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Another way that entrepreneurial managers assist in ﬁrm sustainability is by
building channels and alternative structures within the ﬁrm that allow for innovation.
These alternative arrangements can involve separate laboratories in which scientists can
pursue scientiﬁc hunches or more basic science than speciﬁc, product-driven science.

(Company name) tradition allows for skunkworks. So if management says
we don’t think that project is really worth pursuing, it isn’t as if a scientist
who really believes in it couldn’t devote some of his or her own time and
effort to go to the next level Of proof. To demonstrate that, in fact, that yes,
this is a good idea. A good project. So we have products that have originated
in skunkworks, that basically were a couple of scientists working together
creating a product jointly. SO that’s our tradition; in other organizations

that would never be allowed. (R1, p. 18)

It may also include committees that review new ideas for products that are not
currently being focused on within the company. In providing employees with an
organizational framework for their creative ideas, managers maintain an ongoing
commitment to product innovation without losing focus on current strategies and
products.

What we do have in addition to that is that we have a new product
commercialization committee. And the idea is that anytime

somebody thinks there should be a new product, a new application, it is
supposed to go through that committee. And so then the appropriate

people are brought it to help evaluate it. And I think there’s a ten-step process
from start to ﬁnish. So where step one is just ﬂoating an idea, at the end

of it, it’s a full-ﬂedged product that’s out on the market. And so there are
milestones that have to be met to be able to progress. And so the idea is

that it’s a means of controlling the process because what happens is you get,
particularly with so many things going on, it’s very easy to have somebody
say, I need this. And somebody starts working on it, it’s not authorized,

it’s very easy for that sort of thing to get out of control. This provides a
means for keeping it in control so that everyone’s on the same page.

(R13, p. 12)

Another characteristic from the entrepreneurial category that participants

identiﬁed was an intrepid attitude to succeed as well as a ﬁrm grounding in the business.

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Managers described their roles in relation to investors, customers, employees, and ﬁrm
proﬁtability.

You’ve got to have enough of a business acumen. You have to get up in

front of investors and convince them you can run the business, and likewise

you’ve got to get in front of your customers and in front of your future

employees and convince them that you know how you’re going to transition

this thing into a technology-based real product and then make it go. (R2, p. 4)

The focus on proﬁtability is an aspect of managerial knowledge that becomes
particularly vital for fums living on venture capital or grant monies. It was identiﬁed as a
motivating force for managers, and need to convey the proﬁtability motive without
diverting from core managerial strategies was suggested by participants. In this and other
ways, managers shaped expectations, experiences, and focused on mutual concerns.

Our job is to be proﬁtable, get product out, so that’s how management,

I am, driving the science a little that way. It’s not that I’m trying to

make it go faster, but I’m trying to make it stay on track. Because I sense

that with every answer you get, you open up more questions. 80 you can

go ﬁnd more answers, and get more questions, and ﬁnally you say, well,

wait a minute. What was I really trying to do? And that’s what I’m trying

to make sure that we keep in perspective. And at the same time teach people

to be smart. Because they may actually ﬁnd an answer that is important.

(R7, p. 13)
Developing entrepreneurial attitudes in others is one of the way that biotechnology
managers support new product designs and innovation. One entrepreneur characterized
biotechnology managers as needing to take on a “cowboy mentality” in order to
effectively manage their ﬁrms. He observed:

Usually you don’t have a history of how things were done. And so you

have to develop it as you go. You have to be creative, you have to be ﬂexible.

You have to be responsive to change. (R11, p. 9)

Whatever aspect of the life sciences industry the participants represented, the

entrepreneurial qualities of creative proﬁtability, an intrepid attitude, and a willingness to

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take risks were pervasive themes in their construction of managerial knowledge.
Participants discerned a number of managerial capacities that enabled ﬁrm growth, and
innovation, and competitive advantage. These include an interest in promoting new ideas,
an understanding of their industry, and a motivation for ﬁrm success. While scientiﬁc
achievement was recognized as an underlying factor in ﬁrm sustainability, participants
recognized that the manager’s ability to implement processes and inﬂuence outcomes
was critical for ﬁrm proﬁtability and growth.
Adaptability

The category of adaptability was identiﬁed by the managers and scientists in the
study as an essential characteristic of managerial knowledge in biotechnology ﬁrms.
What adaptability means for biotechnology managers covers a range of factors and
conditions that are pervasive aspects of doing business in the life sciences. The setting in
which life science ﬁrms Operate is one of uncertainty and contingencies. Science takes
place in an environment subject to many variables and is dependent upon organic
processes. Scientiﬁc experimentation and innovation may result in unanticipated
consequences and discoveries. Because the basis of science is inherently organic,
mutable, and changing, there is an element of the unknown to the scientiﬁc endeavor.

Certainly I think there are qualities for success in this environment. The

thing that I would point to initially, I guess, that comes to mind initially, is an

ability to live with a certain degree of uncertainty as to what your target is.

Because of this evolution and the changing nature of the science that’s

going on. (R14, p. 5)

Comparisons between the biotechnology industry and other industries were

frequently cited by participants. One biotechnology manager who had formerly worked in

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a computer software ﬁrm described the difference between his earlier career and his
current responsibilities.

In other high-tech businesses, you can code ones and zeros to do

a certain thing. That’ll happen. Every time. In the biological sciences it’s
not that clear. We have a range Of things that will happen every time.

And your job is to ﬁgure out what’s the range. And that to me is pretty
fascinating. If you couple that with the elegance of the biological science
itself, the elegance and the complexity, it’s a much more, to me, interesting
problem. (R7, p. 4)

Even the biotechnology ﬁrms that are producing machines and tools for the life
sciences cannot rely entirely on manufacturing principles; they have to work in
conjunction with the science. The length of time from the initial laboratory processes to
ﬁnal product can be lengthy and inefficient. In regulated areas, the wait for FDA approval
may be eight to ten years away from initial product conception and ﬁrm start-up. For the
individual scientist, there may mean a series of trials and errors in the process of
discovery. For the manager, it may be necessary to change strategy frequently and remain
ﬂexible.

In a small ﬁrm you have to wear many hats. You’re living in both worlds

here where you’re managing people but at the same time you’re really

designing experiments, interpreting data, even graphing data...There’s

always the danger that something been missed in the process... Because

we know from this drug discovery process that there are a variety of

problems that can come along the way. And things can fall out for a

variety of reasons that you don’t have control over. And that’s the

nature of the beast. (R17, pp. 1 & 11)

If one were employed by a larger company with more resources

then those kinds of things would be dealt with by speciﬁc groups who

have specialized training. But we...have to wear more than one hat

most days. (R14, p. 8)

One research manager described the many responsibilities of the position, listing a

wide variety of activities, and suggesting the “many hats” that she wears.

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Right now? Today’s responsibilities? (laughs) Besides directing research

and conducting my own independent research to help further some of our
products, I also am directing our human resources, in many ways. And
searching for new scientiﬁc talent to bring into the company. And I’m
evaluating all the resumes and conducting interviews at least on the scientiﬁc
qualiﬁcation portion of that. So in that way, yes, I am a scientiﬁc manager.
Also I’m still in charge of the majority of our purchasing and acquisitions

of any of the materials that we need. And the other big thing is research and
development, working out our protocols and procedures, because sooner

or later we’re going to need to ramp up into production scale for anything
we’re producing. And I’m working out the procedures to streamline them,

to make them into production scale. SO that’s probably my key responsibilities
right now. And also dish washer, and...(laughs) everything else. (R9, p. 3)

Another participant suggested the expansive nature of his role.

You just have to know how to do a lot of different things...you know,

it’s a small company, and you have to do everything. SO, I just got an
administrative assistant about a month and a half ago. So for the ﬁrst

few years I did all of my own everything...you just have to be willing to

do every single detail that it takes to start a company. Like I said, arrange
for telephone lines, arrange for a dumpster, do things that aren’t rewarding.
So you’ve got to be willing to just do whatever it takes. Work hard, and
then really understand your craft. (R6, p. 4)

Change and competition are omnipresent forces for most small life science ﬁrms
because of the incipient nature of their business and the need to create and respond to
new scientiﬁc knowledge. In such an atmosphere, the need for managerial agility is a
constant. Several participants used the word “nimble” to describe their approach to their
environment.

So, targets change there, and you have to be nimble and ready to

change directions if required as the science evolves or the practice

of medicine evolves. (R14, p. 5)

I don’t think you can be competitive in a fast changing thing unless

you get a little bit bigger. Or if at least not bigger, very well funded

and very nimble. Which is where we are now. We’re well-funded and

very nimble. That’s okay in startups, and as I said, our whole industry is

very small right now. And there’s nobody, not one of us, that has a

product on the market yet. So it’s okay to be here now. Five years from
now, it’s not okay to be like we are. Unless you have a leap-frog

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technology. (R6, p. 14)

New knowledge is coming to us so fast from all directions the challenge

is going to be which piece of new knowledge do I turn to for the new
product, or the new service. Because sure as shooting, if I pick this one,
three weeks later or three months later there will be another fact come up
that will seem to compete with the ﬁrst one. Should I quit the ﬁrst one that
I’m doing? Should I switch? That’s why it’s very important to do as
thorough a job as you can not only scientiﬁcally, but from a business
standpoint on the program you’re going to complete, or the new product
you want to try and make. (R3, p. 17)

Biotechnology as a ﬁeld is characterized by factors that cannot always be

controlled or anticipated, and participants described the need to develop a certain level of

comfort with ambiguity. Several managers at start-up ventures suggested that their

business plans were open to any number of directions, depending on the progress of the

science or other external factors. Since biology requires the scientist to be open to

possibilities and subject to conclusions that do not match the original hypothesis, perhaps

this is a factor in the management of life sciences ﬁrms as well. Participants stressed

adaptability as a key feature of an effective managerial style.

We had a large pharmaceutical company come in here last Friday,
actually. We made a presentation to them. And what they said that

they liked about us as much as anything, you know, they loved the
technology, but that our business practices were so ﬂexible. That we
essentially can redesign our agreement with companies to tailor them
to the company. You know, they have different needs too...You have to
be ﬂexible and understand what they need. (R6, p. 5)

The ultimate demonstration of managerial ﬂexibility, a system of total adaptation

and ﬁrm direction based on whatever evolved in the science or that environmental

conditions warranted, was conveyed by several participants. Two managers of recently

formed companies suggested that there were any number of ways that ﬁrm direction

could take.

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However it evolves. There are several paths that we could go. One

is to manufacture ourselves, which I doubt we will do. But that is

one option. The other, more logical one is to sublicense to either an

equipment manufacturer or sublicense pieces of a kit that we assemble

and sell. We also are looking at options for distributors. (R7, p. 2)

We have no idea where this is going to go, one way or another.

I’m sure if you have a compound that works in people, you have a lot

of options. Until then, you don’t have many options. So a lot of it’s

not worth discussing until you have some positive data. Because what

you do is once you get something that works in people you’ve increased

the value of the company tremendously. Until then, your value is lower

than it is, until you get there. And that’s all that matters. (R17, p. 16)

The discontinuous environment of biotechnology reframes expectations and can
deliver unwelcome surprises at the very end of the scientiﬁc process. Firms that have
funding linked to grants or venture capital may experience a funding shortage at a
critical stage of development, and long periods of testing and experimentation can
abruptly end without federal approval, when scientists hit a scientiﬁc plateau, or another
company reaches a signiﬁcant milestone ﬁrst. One participant described what had
happened in a previous life sciences ﬁrm where he worked.

When I joined them they had about 1200 or 1300 employees. So it was

on the large size. And they were getting ready to go public and market

their very ﬁrst product. And what happened was that it got to the ﬁnal

stage of the FDA approval and it was rejected at the very last moment...

And so they went through several rounds of layoffs. When I left there,

they were down to about 550 employees. (R13, p. 2)

Two of the ﬁrms that employed participants had gone through substantial
downsizing within the past few years. While participants attributed this to the completion
of ﬁrm goals, there were also issues of funding and changes in ﬁrm direction that were

expressed. One participant discussed the difﬁculty that the multi-faceted job

requirements, the “many hats” of biotechnology, posed for him.

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Because at this stage your people are being asked to do a wide

variety of things; people get stretched pretty thin. And you can

only do that for so long. And so we need to get the additional

funding so we can build the additional infrastructure. (R13, p. 19)

There are many faces of adaptability as a form of managerial knowledge in
biotechnology ﬁrms, and the managerial challenge is how to respond to and anticipate
a wide range of factors. Adaptability is an effective tool for biotechnology managers
who exhibit characteristics of being ﬂexible and cross-functional in their roles and being
willing to change direction quickly. Imaginative use of short range planning appears to be
a critical strength for managers in the life sciences, as well as the ability to inﬂuence the
ﬁrm’s continuous development into new capabilities.

Timeliness

The concept of timeliness for biotechnolgy managers is closely related to
adaptability because adaptability in the life sciences is Often contingent upon time. The
category of timeliness is based on the concept of temporality, the state of being temporal,
being deﬁned and limited by the factor of time, whether it is of a short duration or a
lengthy period of time. Work and progress in the life sciences industry are bounded by
speed as well as delay, so the construct of timeliness encompasses both a sense of
urgency involving time-to-product, and a lack of time because of competition with other
ﬁrms. Timeliness also takes into account the long view that must be considered in regard
to drug discovery, FDA phases, and the perseverance required for the processes of
biotechnology. As one participant stated, “So time is of the essence...Time is one of the
biggest challenges...” (R9, p. 13).

Participants discussed the considerable length of time that they often encounter,

its inﬂuence Of decision making, and how it shapes relationships with the scientiﬁc team.

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a lot of the stuff in life science really takes longer than people think.

I mean, emotionally, you really want to get it done. And in fact,
intellectually, you can see the end. And you can see that the steps are
relatively simple. But each step in and of itself just takes time. And in

any non-proven process anywhere there are always things that you haven’t
anticipated. Our product is based on that science. And management

has to just nurture that science, support it, I mean, mistakes will be made,
zigs and zags will happen, but nothing we can do, none of our attitudes
should ever say, oh, you guys really screwed us up. (R7, p. 11)

I think one of the important things business-wise is that everything that

we do is at a very early stage. And there tends to be a very long product

life cycle in this kind of work. We’re not doing pharmaceuticals where the
product life cycle is even longer, but if you were doing products focused on
clinical diagnostics, you might have ﬁve six seven years of research and
product development and gearing up into manufacturing before the product’s

actually launched. (R8, p. 6)

Depending on a company’s focus within the life sciences industry, time can either
be measured in very long or very short intervals. The length of time for new
pharmaceuticals to be commercialized or the time demands for drug discovery efforts
contrasts sharply with the ephemeral expanse of time demanded in some aspects of the
biotechnology industry. The research manager for a biotechnology equipment
manufacturer expressed the sense of urgency in which his ﬁrm operates.

Well, to be competitive, what we have to do is ﬁgure out new tools that

scientists need. And newer and better ways, because there’s lots of people

out there, very bright people, who are going to come up with things too.

So we have to come up with things that are better than anyone else and

faster than anyone else. (R13, p. 12)

Although there are some extremely interesting things on a basic research

level out there, and closely associated with things that we do, we don’t

have the luxury to pursue most of those because of the need to focus on

how do we translate science into a sellable product. And move toward
marketing those products and ultimately proﬁtability. (R14, p. 5)

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What advice would a life sciences manager have for those moving into
biotechnology from other industries? One manager at an equipment manufacturer
contrasted the biotechnology business with automotive manufacturing.

Get your wader boots on. Because this is going to move quick, and

you’re going to need all the help you can get. The pace is just unbelievable.
I have had engineers move from the automotive industry into this industry,
and they just can’t believe it. I had one mechanical engineer who literally
worked on an ashtray in the automotive industry for two years. On an
ashtray — two years! I don’t have a product go from conception to
production in two years. If I did, I’d be dead in the market. It moves

so quickly that you will lose your window before you get there. So what

I would advise them is, be prepared for this to be the most fast-paced job
you’ve ever had. Because if not, the company will lose its market share
and you will end up losing your job. You just have to be prepared. This is
an extremely fast marketplace; competition is unbelievable. (R16, p. 14)

Other companies depend on grants or funding from private investors for ﬁnancial
survival. For companies that are grant-focused, each new grant cycle changes company
direction.

In a company this size, if one of the scientists writes a grant proposal,

and it gets funded, that becomes part of the company focus. It’s almost

by default. It’s not so much by design...Each grant is a new product, each
product is a new focus. That's one of the reasons that living on grants is

not such a good idea. See, it’s hard to remain focused for more than a

couple of years and then you've got to change to something else. And

because the grants are intermittent in the way they pay, they’re really not
designed to support companies. They’re designed to supplement research

efforts and the other things. So if you live on these you have to have

several going at once, each of which will have its own timeframe. (R8, pp. 11-12)

Some companies operate on funding from venture capitalists or their own monies
in the start-up phase. There is a sense of not only burning money (the “burn rate” that was
described by several participants), but one of burning time also.

From a small company perspective, there are some key milestones that

you shoot for. With a company that started out, you got $15 million dollars

and you’re bunting money. You’re not making anything, so you have to
raise it. So key milestones are, when do we have to raise money again,

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and when are we shooting for IPO? ...So if the money’s gone, I mean,
we’re done. So it’s the fun part of living on the edge. Because if you don’t
produce then you go belly up. (R17, p.10)

The importance of implementing an efﬁcient scientiﬁc process was emphasized
by one venture capitalist who said the anthem for biotechnology scientists should be “do
it, prove it, and move on.” (R18) Another participant suggested that time and funding
issues were closely aligned.

But the nature of this industry is that you really need to get big fast

or I don’t think you’ll survive long term. You know, right now we live

off investor money and we do have deals with some pharmaceutical

companies. And that money only lasts you so long if you don’t convert

it into real money, making big money soon. (R6, p. 6)

Managers in life science ﬁrms interpret and construct their managerial knowledge
by being adaptable and adjusting to the temporal nature of their business. One participant
suggested the mutability of his role as a “re-invention” that corresponded to the current
business demands.

And what I keep saying is that I have to sort of re-invent myself about

every six months or so, because everything changes so rapidly. SO,

for example for the ﬁrst nine months or so, I needed to be here every

day to get both the physical plant in place and work with people as

closely as possible. So we could sort through and ﬁgure out how to

get protocols to work, and how to get the systems in place and

operational. Since then what I did was that I actually took over one

area of the work. So what I’ve been focusing on up until right now,

but that will be changing again very soon, working with the software

to ﬁgure out the best ways to analyze the data in the next month or so.

(R13, p. 7)

The concept of the re-invention of the professional self offers a profound response
to the category of timeliness and the managerial role in biotechnology ﬁrms. The

participants articulated the signiﬁcance of time in a number of ways, and the overarching

inﬂuence of time on the work of the biotechnology ﬁrm. The need to be timely in product

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launches, in new directions for the ﬁrm, in capitalizing on current trends, were identiﬁed
as aspects of successful managerial decision making that created the category of
timeliness.

Collaboration

The concept of collaboration emerged as an important category in regard to
managerial knowledge in the life sciences industry. Collaboration in biotechnology
management involves shared knowledge and authority, teamwork, shared responsibility
toward each other, and a sense of “community”. Because many of the participants shared
a background in the “community of science” and began their careers as doctoral students,
this category was originally labeled “collegiality”. Later, the category became
“collaboration” because it was understood to be a more inclusive perspective. There was
an esprit de corps that participants conveyed about the mutual concerns within their
companies and a certain amount of shared enthusiasm toward their work and interest in
the success of their colleagues and their ﬁrms.

Participants suggested that shared scientiﬁc knowledge and similar career
backgrounds offered a common framework in biotechnology ﬁrms. For the most part,
managerial decision making was portrayed as occurring in a highly interactive
environment.

Most of the managers, as I said, have all been scientists before. And that

is true to a certain extent...and here I’m saying managers in our world,

which is the R&D world. Everybody is somebody who has worked their

way up from a research lab, one way or another. And so it is a common

world they share with the research scientists and their interests are really...

the common concerns or interests are really the speciﬁc research projects.

And how to evaluate which ones worth pursuing, worth considering,

how to evaluate the data that are being developed. And make the right

decisions. I think that the exchange between management and science
is, at least here, really a discussion about decisions. Sharing information

84

and then making decisions based on that information. (R1, p. 17)

A sense of informality and sharing of perspectives within the companies and
between scientists and managers were pervasive aspects of the interviews. Several
participants suggested the need for continual communication about company concerns
and the consequences of not communicating. Participants appeared to make a point of
sharing company information and fostering a collegial environment.

This is much more of a collaborative and open sort of arrangement where people
are discussing things at all levels. The ﬂow of information has to go both ways.
Because otherwise you’re dead in the water. That’s the one thing I can think of.
It’s how information is managed. It’s very important to have open management
and open discussions as much as possible. (R13, p. 20)

I don’t believe that it’s my right to withhold information from people
because I don’t think they need it today to do their job. I think it’s my
job to give everybody as much information as possible and they decide
how it ﬁts in their job. People are really smart, I mean brains really

work well, and if you’ve nurtured an environment where people are
allowed to think, make mistakes, make their own decisions, they’ll
sponge up all this information and they’ll ﬁgure out what they need to

do their jobs. And in fact, they’ll be doing it better. If I’m holding back
information, for example, if I don’t think the guy in the lab really doesn’t
need to know about corporate ﬁnance, because he doesn’t need ﬁnance to
do his job, and he technically doesn’t, that’s right. And some managers
really do that, but I don’t, and I don’t think any good ones do. (R7, p. 10)

After we have a board meeting we get together and we go through

what the board discussed and what the conclusions were. From options
and are we going to issue them and are we not going to issue them, and
what are the reasons for that, to ﬁnancial statements. ..We do review this
for the entire organization... I think to make people aware of the health
of the company is good. Because then if you have to sit them down

and say we’ve got a problem at least they know that you’ve got a
problem. And likewise when you tell them that things are going well
they can believe that things are going well. That’s how you get an effort.
It’s like a family. (R2, p. 7)

Product development and commercialization require the combined efforts of

scientists and managers working from a wide knowledge base. The focus on teamwork

85

and the strength of combined knowledge was emphasized by participants as integral to
their work. In many cases, even though the ﬁrms may have been the creation of one
scientist, one product, or one discovery, the need for team-created strategies became
evident as participants talked. The approach for team-based work was often described as
non-hierarchical and informal. As one research director stated, “My role is to lead a team
that discovers drugs and I need to draw on the expertise of different people.” (R12, p. 13)

Another expressed his role in facilitating the scientiﬁc and technical processes of
the ﬁrm:

So what I do is to look to see what I can take over for people to make

their lives a little easier. The way I describe my job in that respect is

that I see my job as making it possible for everybody else to get their

work done. Whatever that takes. Just to clear the way. (R13, p. 8)

So we’ve got to ﬁnd common agendas. We’ve got to decide what our goal

is, what are the most important things for us to ﬁght... But to be able to

communicate these things, it’s going to be really important to marshal the

resources to also accomplish that goal. (R8, p. 20)

At one company, the employee base is small enough to ﬁt into the manager’s
ofﬁce. A participant described the process of interaction and atmosphere of trust that
they have together.

In a small biotech, you’re a research associate, but your opinion

about how things are going is valued. And you have some input into

how product development will go. And so in that way, everybody,

you’re working as a unit. It’s not, this is my division over here, I have

nothing to do with, you know, the next division over there. And so, in

that way, I see that it’s a big melting pot and you all work together...

And it’s been a very tightly knit group of working together. And then

usually when we decide on a plan, not just one person works on it. We

all will divide up the work so that we know that anyone who’s working

on the problem can solve it. (R9, pp. 6 & 13)

Several participants described the egalitarian nature of their businesses and how

communication about mutual company concerns takes place. The informality is

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characterized by a collegial management style and all-company Friday meetings with
food, team sports, and all levels of the company participating.

Well, actually in a small company like this, it’s you know, I walk back
there and talk to everybody periodically. If it’s a business-related issue,

I go back and I talk to everybody. Pretty much every Friday but certainly
every other Friday we knock off around two O’clock. Everybody comes
into the conference room and we bring in food and sometimes I lead it...
sometimes we have an employee lead on one project or on one process that
they’re doing that the company has never done before. So it depends on
what the topic is, the person who is the most well-versed in that then
speaks to the topic. (R6, p. 9-10)

We are very team-oriented, we work and play well together, and I ﬁnd

that to be the most important portion of getting product out the door.
Communication skills, just a good work ethic and growth ethic between

the engineers. And that is shared company wide with this division. I’m a
very ﬂat line manager. I do not believe in a pyramid. You are as likely

to see me with a screwdriver out on the production ﬂoor as you are to

see me in the engineering group trying to help with a mechanical problem.

I just don’t believe that because I have been promoted into this position

that I sit above anybody here. I have a different skill set, that’s all. (R16, p. 6)

You have to know how to utilize all your fellow scientists to their
maximum potential. And be able to say, okay, go do that go do this,
so we’re all working as a team and getting everything done. But you
aren’t creating friction between everybody. So that somebody doesn’t
think, well, I’m working on this and he’s working on that, and it’s
just about the same thing, and if one of us doesn’t work fast enough,
the other one will get the axe. That’s not the idea. You’re all working
together as a team to bring it all together. And so in some ways you
need people skills to manage all your other scientists to make sure that
everybody’s happy and everybody’s being productive. (R9, p. 9)

Another subcategory of collaboration in life science ﬁrms emphasized by
participants was a strong emphasis on valuing the consumer as well as an ongoing
commitment to company employees. This evidenced itself in comments about respect for
individuals, being sensitive to fellow employees’ personal concerns and family issues,
and giving people time away from their work. A number of participants indicated that the

commitment to each other was a necessary aspect of the managerial role and company

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focus. The founders of one biotechnology company developed a mission statement that
addressed the htunanitarian aspects of management.

And the values we set up to try to foster that, where individual dignity,
excellence in science, and vibrant teamwork are really our three keys.

And we try to foster it; I think they’re a little more than just words on a page.
Particularly to the founders; we’ve really thought this through, what we
wanted to create for a company. (R10, p. 3)

This idealistic framework was expressed in a number of ways by participants, enough to
form a subcategory for a values-driven approach to management.

You have to have a philosophy of whether people are valuable or not.

Or whether you have a more utilitarian view of things. SO it doesn’t

matter if you’re life science or not. It’s all about people. We have a good
friend who says, it’s people ﬁrst, programs second, hardware last. And
usually that gets ﬂipped. Because technology is such a driver in science
that the people are lost. And then programs. So people are always third.
And you see this all the time. And that’s one reason, for our values, we put
individual dignity at the top...You have to have an attitude; do you work
with people, or do people work for you? And I think just answering that
question will tell you a lot about a person’s view of things. So that’s a skill,
you just have a concept of persons. And that people are valuable, and

that they have an inherent value. They’re not valuable just on what they do.
(R10, p. 8)

Loyalty sounds old fashioned but I think one of the big mistakes is not looking at
our resources as human beings. We need to look at our people more closely as
having families, as having issues outside of work. Looking at them as long term
employees, not someone to ﬁll in for the next ﬁve years. Or until something better
comes along. (R16, p. 20)

You’ve got to have a manager who truly believes they should treat people the way
they want to be treated. And throw away a lot of that logic and theory and things
that are important from an educational point of view. To understand how to
manage situations and people. But when you get right down to it, when you’re
managing people you’re managing people, not what they do. (R7, p. 6)

The category of collaboration may be an outgrowth of the small size of most

biotechnology companies, the close physical proximity of most employees, and the

collective understandings of the scientiﬁc community. Yet collaboration provided a

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understanding the managerial knowledge that is needed in biotechnology ﬁrms.
Collaboration emerged as a signiﬁcant aspect of the role of the biotechnology manager:
creating collaborative opportunities, fostering teamwork and mutual respect, and
encouraging interaction from employees with diverse skills sets and expertise.
Knowledge Integration

The category of knowledge integration in biotechnology ﬁrms involves the
signiﬁcant roles that knowledge management, development and diffusion have in the life
sciences. Knowledge management includes both scientiﬁc and managerial knowledge,
and the effective merging of both toward ﬁrm success. Knowledge development refers to
the continuous advancement of knowledge that biotechnology demands and the
managerial role of mentoring, support, and development of others. Knowledge diffusion
involves the acquisition, sharing, and distribution of strategic knowledge within the
company.

The management of knowledge is essential for life sciences ﬁrms, determining, to
a great extent, ﬁrm capability, direction, and sustainability. Because effective use of
scientiﬁc knowledge remains the foundation for company dynamics, participants
identiﬁed the selection, management, and retention of scientiﬁc expertise and talent as
important aspects of the managerial role. Participants also suggested that managerial
responsibilities involve the shaping of mutual concerns and expectations between
management and scientiﬁc staff toward corporate goals.

While participants acknowledged that the management of knowledge was a
critical aspect of managerial work in biotechnology ﬁrms, they also recognized that

managers could not truly be experts of the scientiﬁc knowledge. Rather, even those with

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scientiﬁc backgrounds considered themselves non-experts who were facilitating and
guiding the scientiﬁc process. The speed of science and scientiﬁc breakthroughs required
managers to step back from the science and rely on the expertise of the scientists around
them. The managerial role in fostering a culture of mutual respect and open pathways for
communicating knowledge was described by participants.

My approach is to hire good competent knowledgeable people and
surround myself with those people and then try to manage the knowledge
through that management of individuals or staff. But without question
there’s a management of knowledge element required in this kind of a
position. Without question. (R14, p. 13)

So I think that it becomes incumbent upon a manager to think about the
group as a collection of people who all have valuable contributions to make.
So things need to be cast in a very positive inclusive sense. And there’s very
little making of orders. It’s more setting about “what if” kind of situations,
attempting to do brainstorming, the sort of classic mode of brainstorming
without criticism. (R8, p. 5)

What I would say is that you have to be very adaptable, both in terms of

who and what you’re dealing with. But basically it’s a ﬂexibility that is very
important. And being able to learn and pull together from diverse areas. I
think that’s the most important thing. You can’t be autocratic. You might

be able to do that, and it’s probably necessary on the manufacturing side.

But particularly when you’re working with other scientists, that does not
work. The best way to do it, in my mind, is to be as collegial and collaborative
as possible... Because in an area like this, where the technology is changing

so rapidly, no one person has the copyright on what’s right or wrong. And

so it’s important to get as many heads together openly as possible. (R13, p. 10)

If I have the people around me, the scientists and physicians who have the
expertise for these areas, I don’t need to know that. I need to provide the
leadership this team would need to be successful. I surround myself with the
experts. It’s not necessarily what I know, it’s who I know. In terms of getting
these ﬁrings done. (R11, p. 7)

Often the need to bring together diverse skill sets and promote knowledge within

the ﬁrm involves knowledge acquisition. Matching the selection of personnel to the

ﬁrm’s needs and integrating personnel into the company is a critical management

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function, according to participants. Since personnel dynamics may have a substantial
inﬂuence on company direction and momentum, participants described the careful
consideration given to the process of knowledge acquisition through personnel selection.

First I have to look at skill set. I have to look at skill set for the good of
the company. Secondly, I look at how do they ﬁt into my team. How do
they interplay with the other people who are already established there.

I will get ﬁfteen or twenty resumes and of that I will go through and

skim off just the people who have the skill set. Those people are basically
having the same skill set. Now I go through the interviewing process where
I have somebody come in and talk to me speciﬁcally to get to know their
personality. What is it that they’re looking for in a company? How do they
feel this issue or that issue? How will they interplay with the people that I
already have here? Because the skill sets are there. But I need to ﬁnd
somebody who will work well in my team. Because if you get somebody
in here who doesn’t work well in your team they can knock the whole
project out of line. (R16, p. 21)

When looking for personnel to fulﬁll a scientiﬁc role, participants continuously
stressed the need to be product-focused, to do applied research, and to be team-oriented.
This is how one participant responded to a question regarding what he was looking for in
selecting new scientiﬁc staff.

First of all, excellent training. Of course, that becomes very subjective. But
you look at their pedigree in terms of where they were trained, what exactly
they worked on, what kinds of problems they worked on, and how they
tried to address those problems. To a certain extent, you also look at
personality. Because they’ve got to be people who have to be able to

work with other people. Unlike in academics, everything is team-based.

So where as a graduate student, in particular, you’re taught to solve every
problem by yourself, with no help from anyone else. At a company it’s

just the opposite. You have to turn around and be able to work with other
people. And so you can be a very brilliant scientist, but if you can’t get
along with people, you’re not going to last. The third thing again, comes
back to the thing I said earlier about ﬂexibility. The timeframes in a
biotech company in particular are much shorter. So when you come out

of academics, you took ﬁve or six years to do your Ph.D. And a typical
grant is maybe three or ﬁve years, something like that. Well, the equivalent
of a grant period here might be six months. And so an emergency comes up,
you’ve got to be prepared to jump. And that means that even though you
have a project that you really want to work on, you may have to put that

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aside for awhile. You may never come back to it. That’s just the way it is.
And so you have to be able to accept that. Those are things that I can see.
(R13, p. 14)

Quite often, knowledge management means knowledge acquisition: acquiring
valuable skill sets that ﬁll an information gap for a company or a new focus area for the
ﬁrm.

And I think that today more than historically people are likely to be
hired to actually bring in a new skill set that they would acquire in
their basic education. That an existing organization might either

lack or have a deﬁciency in, and perhaps I can illustrate by being
more speciﬁc. Molecular biology skills may be sought out by a
company whereas when I left an academic institution and joined an
industrial concern, I think people would look more at basic skills

and sort of a base education, I guess. Now I think that’s certainly a
factor but I think that very speciﬁc skills are often being sought in the
hiring process. (R14, p. 10)

The importance of managing knowledge by managing expectations and shaping
experiences within the ﬁrm was expressed by participants. In doing so, managers attempt
to merge the scientiﬁc strength of the ﬁrm with product development, timeline goals, and
strategies for corporate success. One manager actually had a prototype of the ﬁnal
product made so that the scientists could literally see the goal for their experiments, a
diagnostic kit for consumer use. He described his role as follows.

I’m trying to get everybody to understand what is the product...Most
people in research don’t really have that in mind. Other than a theory
or an idea or they’ve been given a test to do and they’re going to run
experiments. If we can clearly deﬁne a product and put it on the ball, ‘
and say, this is what we all want to get to. That’s what we’ve done,
actually. We’ve actually had a designer draw it up. What do you think
our product would look like? So we have it. We’ve all seen it. So
management’s driving the science in the sense, I think, that in terms

of research and development, I want to be researching and developing
toward a product. Not research and development toward more academic
knowledge. That’s important, but that’s not our job. (R7, p. 12)

Other managers described how they shape the experience for the scientiﬁc staff.

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What I try to do is explain and give context was much as I can.

Again, I can’t always see everything that’s going on. Because there

are secrets in any company. In terms of ﬁnancial managerial, those
kinds of things. But what I try to do is give the people who work for
me as complete a picture as possible. So they can understand why

we need something, why this is important. What are the implications
of doing this versus that. And they’re bright enough that they can draw
their own conclusions. And if they disagree, we’ll argue about it, and if
they have a good reason, that overrides it, let’s ﬁnd out what it is, and
so we can come to a consensus.(Rl3, p.15)

Well, one of the things that a manager has to do is move resources
around. To deal with the issues that come up, to be able to meet
deadlines, to make sure that people can be paid for their time so that

you don’t overextend a given project...So as a manager one of the

things that I need to do is to look at the amount of time that people

are putting into things, to look at the milestones that we have to hit

along the way, and to try to adjust people’s efforts in ways

that the milestones are hit and the budgets aren’t overextended. (R8, p. 7)

The important relationship between scientiﬁc knowledge and managerial success
means that managers become intent on creating bridges toward mutual understandings.
Enhancing scientists’ awareness for deadlines and focusing on product development
becomes critical to ﬁrm sustainability. A scientist suggested that management had
inﬂuenced her perspective of the need for scientiﬁc work in pursuit of a product.

So in some ways management is telling us as scientists, look toward

everything you’re doing and put to the forefront something we can get

to market within a year. So those usually are the more important projects

that we’re working on, even though the other ones are there, and if

something surprisingly happens that we can push it quicker, that would

come to the ﬁont. But for now the management push is just, see if you

can get something on the market! (laughs) We need to be out there! (R9, p. 8)

Bringing mutual concerns to the forefront and making company strategy known to
a broad range of the staff was discussed by participants. The ability to successfully

integrate this knowledge, yet remain ﬂexible and facile was viewed as an important

managerial task.

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You need to have people who are strategic thinkers and are willing to
move very quickly because this is a fast-moving marketplace. And if you
ﬁnd out your strategy ain’t working it’s time to say that maybe that was
the wrong strategy. Not, I’m so smart I’m going to lean on my strategy.
And we’ve made a couple of strategic errors as far as getting as far as what
we thought we might quickly be able to accomplish with all this maturity
that I talked about. But as soon as we recognized it, we didn’t keep battling
and say, well, let’s keep doing this another week. You’ve got to have
somebody who will make clear, concise decision when it’s time to get off
that boat and onto another boat. And make sure you do it right the second
time around because three mistakes aren’t allowed. And we’re pretty good at
doing that. And I would say that no one person can take the credit for
bringing up the problem, I think that everybody on the management team
is not afraid to make decisions. (R2, p. 15)

Another participant corroborated the need for integrative, multi-faceted strategies.

An ability to evaluate a problem and to devise more than one approach to

solve the problem, I think, is often a critical skill in this kind of an environment
as well. In science there is a certain degree of unpredictability that goes along
with an approach to a speciﬁc question or problem. And you need to be able to
get past the problem so you need to be able to make adjustments on the ﬂy to
one degree or another to ﬁnd solutions or ways to circumvent hurdles that crop
up. (R14, p. 4)

The need for a common platform of knowledge and understanding of mutual
company concerns was expressed by a scientist.

One of our main concerns is getting out the best product possible.

From the scientiﬁc point of view, we don’t want to put something out
there that we would be embarrassed to have our names on. That is faulty,
that has a lot of problems. And also from the management point of view
we want the best product out there so that our company name looks good,
we get good customer loyalty, we have people coming to us, wanting us to
do this test. And probably making ourselves proﬁtable. It’s a win-win
situation on the science side. We can do better science if we’re proﬁtable.
We can have more toys and gadgets to play with if we’re proﬁtable. We
can expand what we want to do and what we can do if we’re proﬁtable and
from the management side, that means we’re a success. And we can
expand and we can develop more (product) and we can help more people.
(R9, p. 12)

The subcategory of knowledge development recognizes the role that knowledge

growth and expansion has in life science ﬁrms. Often, participants suggested that

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knowledge development exhibited itself as a managerial function in the development and
education of employees through mentoring and sharing knowledge. The importance
given to continuous learning involves both scientists and managers, and viewed from a
learning framework, the managerial role is seen as a conscientious and progressive
activity. In this sense, management becomes a constructed activity based on experiences
with others and opportunities to learn. Managers described how they themselves were
mentored and developed an interest in management.

I have great mentors. They’re the people from (company name) where I
started my career, who were all much older. I was the only middle
management person they had when the company started because the
company was small. But these people owned three or four businesses
that all grew fabulously. And they took me along and let me be a part of
several of these companies and they taught me a lot of things that were
in their own interests too, so they would have less that they had to do.
But also for me, that put my career I think so far ahead of other people
who just go out and get the education. You can get a good job, but
having the right mentors is critical. And that’s what our advisory board
is all about. I think it’s an extension of the mentoring process. (R6, p. 22)

I feel that it’s critical for me to be, periodically, reassessing with my
direct reports and looking for ways to gradually expand scope as skills
and abilities and experience dictate. (R14, p. 16)

Another participant described his own mentoring process, and how it has
inﬂuenced his commitment to mentoring others.

These people were intimately and actively involved and actively seeking
speciﬁc experiences, opportunities, projects to manage, projects to play

a role in a team, those kinds of things that just added tremendously to my
depth of experience. And so it was a very active mentoring. It wasn’t a
passive mentoring at all. And I still believe, my management style is much
along those lines as well. I feel that it’s critical for me to be, periodically,
reassessing with my direct reports and looking for ways to gradually
expand scope as skills and abilities and experience dictate. (R14, p. 16)

Educating scientists with some managerial knowledge base was viewed by

participants as a positive inﬂuence on their careers.

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Ten or ﬁfteen or twenty years ago scientists did science and business
people took care of business. And it’s not, today, in my estimation, it’s

not as clear-cut as that anymore. I think the lines have blurred, if you will,
between disciplines. And now one has an advantage if they have some
business acumen and experience and education. Even if their primary

focus isn’t scientiﬁc management. If you can understand marketing and
ﬁnance and those sorts of things and have some training or experience in
those areas that adds to your market value and adds to your sophistication,
obviously. And also I think adds value to the employer. And I think those in
combination make it desirable for people to either educationally or through
direct experience have a broader understanding of not only the science, but
how does the science relate to the business and how do those two combine or
work in concert to develop products that eventually give an opportunity for
revenues to the company. (R14, p. 11)

I just think that scientists should spend more time almost as an
apprenticeship in business to know what’s going on and know how

things are done. You know, for example, knowing a material transfer
agreement exists and why we have it. A lot of scientists are very...

they treat everybody as a colleague and treat the lab people as their
altruistic other scientists. But then somehow someway your idea gets

stolen along the way because you’ve shared these materials with somebody.
So I just think that scientists need to know that there are certain protocols
that you go through for almost every aspect of business, and they’re there to
protect you. (R6, p. 8)

Several managers discussed how they provide opportunities for professional
development and managerial knowledge.

I’m a ﬁrm believer of internal development and professional development
and clearly having somebody understand that what we’re doing has got to
be proﬁtable. That what that means is that it has to meet customer needs.
That means in addition to intriguing experiments and research, and making
mistakes is okay, and all that stuff, the whole picture, I think that so far
we’ve had a pretty Open book. Everybody here sees our budget, the results
of our budget, and I try to help them understand what that means, in terms
of where we’re headed, what we’ve been asked to do. And I think over time
we will put in place more meaningful training where people can actually get
a layman’s understanding of corporate ﬁnance, for example. Or, you know,
what is marketing? What does advertising do for you? Why do you have a
PR ﬁrm? What does that mean? What is market intelligence? What is
market research? Why is it important that the product has a plan? All that
stuff. I think now, since we’re a startup, we’re all so closely related, in our
discussions, the sense of that comes through, and this group can pick it up.
(R7, p. 10)

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I think the only key is I would say particularly in increasing management
capabilities of scientists, is give them exposure. I mean, let them ﬁgure
out if they’re interested in transitioning halfway out of the research
laboratory to be a manager of people. Take the next step to be a manager in
the organization, to the real world. I think it’s exposure. I think that classes
and coursework certainly are a valuable piece of that, to give people and
understanding of things that they’re not normally exposed to. But beyond
that I think that exposure is important. (R2, p. 17)

The competitive nature of the life sciences industry caused several managers to
arrive at creative strategies for knowledge development within their ﬁrms. Managers
described a perspective on knowledge development through motivating employees
toward continuous improvement. Several suggested that encouraging competition
between employees was one way they developed company knowledge and improved ﬁrm
processes.
You have to be able to be a motivational leader, you have to be able to get
people to push themselves as hard as they can push. Without going over
the edge. And that’s a very thin line. (R16, p 7)

Another participant stated his attitude toward developing competitive knowledge.

I have to also encourage competition. To keep peOple moving as well,

so it’s a ﬁne line. Because you want them (the scientists) to be working

and cooperating with each other but there has to be a little edge too.

Because otherwise people become complacent. And you can’t have

that either. So it’s a tough balancing act. (R13, p. 11)

The careful management of knowledge and its development was referred to as a
“balancing act” and “a thin line” to be managed judiciously toward the produCt
development and innovation.

I think it’s a mutual interaction with the scientist and the manager. And

whatever mechanism they have to do they have to just interact. And the

scientist has a responsibility to educate the manger. The manager has

responsibility to show the other side of the scientist. It’s more than a

communication. It is deﬁnitely more than a communication. I think
there is...most managers, for instance, a Ph.D. is very interested in

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learning, because he wants to get his company into the next level.
So he will go out of his way and that is a positive side. (R5, p. 13)

I’m a ﬁrm believer of internal development and professional

development and clearly having somebody understand that what

we’re doing has got to be proﬁtable. That what that means is that

it has to meet customer needs. That means in addition to intriguing
experiments and research, and making mistakes is okay, and all that

stuff, the whole picture, I think that so far we’ve had a pretty open

book. Everybody here sees our budget, the results of our budget, and

I try to help them understand what that means, in terms of where

we’re headed, what we’ve been asked to do. And I think over time

we will put in place more meaningful training where people can actually
get a layman’s understanding of corporate ﬁnance, for example. Or,

you know, what is marketing? What does advertising do for you? Why

do you have a PR ﬁrm? What does that mean? What is market intelligence?
What is market research? Why is it important that the product has a plan?
All that stuff. I think now, since we’re a startup, we’re all so closely
related, in our discussions, the sense of that comes through, and this group
can pick it up. (R7, p. 10)

The subcategory of knowledge diffusion refers to the sharing and dissemination
of knowledge within the ﬁrm, the communication ﬂow between managers and scientiﬁc
staff, and vice versa, and the infusion of new knowledge. There is always the possibility
for disparate perspectives to grow between managers and scientists in life science ﬁrms,
even though management is dependent upon good science, and scientiﬁc staff is
dependent on product marketability. The need for continuous knowledge distribution
and communication was identiﬁed as an important managerial function.

Differences between the managerial mindset and the scientiﬁc staff were
acknowledged by several participants.

Some of the other presidents and CEOs I deal with, a lot of them have no

understanding of the technology. They are people with a business

management, you know, they have a degree and they deal with money.

And they are super, but when it comes to technology, you can talk to them

six days, you know, and still they come back with the same questions.

If you asked them to give a short presentation of this technology with
which they are going to get involved, they are lost. (R4, p. 13)

98

You might get somebody who has the business background but doesn’t
have the technical background and may have some brilliant idea or
something they think would be a very nice business model. But they

have no way to realize that model, no way to work through of the

physical and chemical things that you have to do to make it work. (R8, p. 8)

The need for the diffusion of information and identiﬁcation of mutual concerns
between scientiﬁc and management areas of the ﬁrm were stressed as vital to ﬁrm
sustainability.

Obviously the mutual concern of all of us understanding what our
product is. Who our customer is, what the marketplace is, all that.

I guess another mutual concern is understanding, and we haven’t
touched on this at all, on the research side, the other science that’s
going on around us and the rest of the world. Keeping ourselves
plugged in, because that’s moving unbelievably fast. And wouldn’t
it be embarrassing if we spent all our time and money and released a
product and somebody else had already patented what we’re using?
So we’re mutually concerned about knowing that. (R7, p. 14)

One strategy described by the managers and scientists for knowledge diffusion in
life science ﬁrms was to continuously acquire knowledge and make the ﬁndings known
to the rest of the ﬁrm. Life sciences personnel bring new knowledge to bear on ﬁrm
issues and bridge gaps in knowledge from a variety of sources: the Internet, scientiﬁc and
business journals, conferences, and by networking with others in the life sciences
community.

We spend fair amounts of time at scientiﬁc or medical meetings trying

to assess new scientiﬁc approaches that might be competitive, or '
synergistic even, in some cases. But we spend a lot of time reading and

a lot of time at meetings trying to keep abreast of what’s going on our
there. We spend a lot of time talking with clinicians who are our
customers to try to understand from their perspective the same sort of
dynamic. You know, what do you see on the horizon that may play a

role here? Do you see anything that’s directly competitive? Or potentially
competitive? How feasible is that in the practice of medicine? What are the
shortfalls? Compare and contrast for us, if you would. So we do focus
groups and that sort of thing. But mostly it’s one on one with clinicians,

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thought leaders in the ﬁeld, that we use for that kind of an assessment.
(R14, p. 15)

In at least one small ﬁrm, searching the Internet is a company-wide mechanism
for new knowledge integration.

We all get on the Internet every day and the scientists have set up their
own little search programs and every day they get whatever they get.

(R7 . p- 14)
In some cases, it’s the scientiﬁc knowledge that can inﬂuence the ﬁrm strategy,
through the scientists sharing current scientiﬁc readings with others.

When you have Ph.D. scientists who read the general issue science
magazines, like Science, and who read Science News, and who look

at the science section of the New York Times, and you can see that

there are large issues afoot, and then you look at the solicitations ﬁ'om
NIH or the Department of Defense, and you say, aha, here’s something
that happens to ﬁt very strongly into one of these big societal issues...

So in some ways it’s more likely that the scientist will be the person who
is picking that out. Because he’s aware of how you can get from the large
societal issues like osteoporosis to developing a drug based on some
internal expertise. And the manager is probably less likely to make that
connection because he doesn’t have the scientiﬁc background (R8, p. 13)

The learning may be mutual, as one participant described his need to understand
the science in his performance as a manager.

I think you really have to, even if you’re not doing science, like I’m not doing

science anymore, and haven’t been for a long time, you really need to understand

the science. And if you don’t know it, like this stuff that we do here is so far

advanced from when I was a scientist, you’ve got to take the time to learn. And I

continue to learn everyday. But it took me a good six months to a year to get a

real basic understanding of what we’re doing. So I think that, above just about

everything else, you have to know the technology. (R6, p. 4)

The need for knowledge diffusion was particularly acute as ﬁrms grew larger or
several scientiﬁc ﬁelds were involved in a process. Managing the distribution of

knowledge in order to move the company forward was discussed as an aspect Of

managerial identity.

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Every development process has at least one scientist on it, at least one

engineer, at least one management person, at least one ﬁnance person,

one marketing person, that kind of thing. So each of our development

processes is done with a team. And it opens up the communications so

that we do all understand what our end goals are. (R16, p. 10)

Another aspect of the diffusion of knowledge within life science ﬁrms is in
creating a common set Of understandings about the ﬁrm by reporting current ﬁnancial
information, strategies, and competition.

Without question, (company) is more open about ﬁnances and

objectives and focus and that sort of thing than other ﬁrms that I’ve

worked for. So the employees at least know where we stand and what

the risk factors are in regards to the ﬁnancial situation. The timeline

element and focus elements are also reviewed periodically and

communicated to staff...And we even usually do at least a mid-year

review and revision and have frequently done quarterly review and

revision to budgets and those types of things. And that gets communicated

to the employees as well, the science folks and the engineering folks. (R14, p. 9)

Although managerial and ﬁnancial information appeared to be shared very openly
by managers at life science ﬁrms, there were several participants who did not have as
much information available to them. One scientist said, “I would like to know if we were
going to be out of money in eight months, because I might be able to do something about
it.” (R8, p. 13) The diffusion of knowledge, as suggested by the participant, may lead to
new possibilities for ﬁrm growth.

Because many managers in life science ﬁrms have scientiﬁc backgrounds,
understanding how to transmit scientiﬁc knowledge to others and communicate with non-
scientiﬁc colleagues is particularly important. One participant identiﬁed the transition
from the scientiﬁc framework to the managerial perspective.

They have to be able to give thorough directions to what the goal is,

and what that person’s doing. Where we end up by doing this project

may not get us there, but let’s ﬁnd out if it does or doesn’t. We’ll learn
something from it. And you have to have people that communicate and the

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ability to communicate difﬁcult science to someone who understands
nothing. In my opinion, that’s absolutely critical. Got to ﬁnd a way to
make a snake oil into a legitimate product. And it’s communication that
will ultimately prove that. (R2, p. 16)

A research manager described the intellectual bridge that he spans on a regular
basis and the challenges he faces as both a scientist and a manager.

Right now I’m a research scientist and I look at data and I have this

model of how this part of the universe might work, and I’m trying to

give evidence for it. And another time I’m looking at the resources

we have and at some point my own project is going to take a hit.

So I’m going to have to be able to prepare myself for that and not

become too emotionally tied to it. So I think you have to kind of let

yourself be, if not schizophrenic about it, at least separate that into two

compartments. (R8, p. 8)

A strong basic scientist who wants to focus upon an issue, as long as

they keep the focus that they have to get patents, they have to be

productive and develop product. To do basic research in this or any

other organization, they need to keep those two characteristics in mind.

If they want to be a manager, they again have to become a transition

level and be able to take that technology out the real world and

present it to people. And then they can move up to management ranks,

and senior positions, from an administrative view of the company. (R2, p. 5)

The diffusion of knowledge, through communication and sharing information
between the “two compartments” of life sciences ﬁrms, the research scientist and the
research manager, were identiﬁed as critical aspects of managerial knowledge. The
ability to understand both perspectives and to ﬁnd ways to integrate knowledge was
acknowledged by participants to embody important attributes for managerial success.

The category of knowledge integration brings together knowledge management,
knowledge development, and knowledge diffusion. Participants indicated that
managerial effectiveness in the biotechnology industry depended on the insightful use of
knowledge integration strategies. They suggested that taking an active role in the

management of knowledge, its development and its diffusion extended ﬁrm value and

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sustainability. In an industry dominated by the evolution of scientiﬁc knowledge, the
successful manager is one who exhibits a deft ability to merge knowledge and facilitate
its creative progression.
Managerial Learning

Managerial knowledge in biotechnology represents a combination of the
managerial traits of entrepreneurship, adaptability, timeliness, collaboration, and
knowledge integration. Because management was described by participants as a learned
experience and a re-invention of self, managers also discussed the managerial learning
that contributed to their construction of managerial knowledge. Managers related that
being a successful life science manager required a different knowledge base and set of
skills than those required of the scientist. Because most of the managers had a scientiﬁc
background and successful scientiﬁc careers, they had to reconﬁgure their knowledge
base, learn new tasks, acquire managerial knowledge, and, in effect, re-invent themselves
to function in a managerial role. Managers in the life sciences described boundary—
spanning roles involving an exchange from the scientiﬁc community of practice to the
managerial community. Participants attributed their current understandings of
management to the managerial learning that was so essential in their development.

A participant described the transformation from scientist to manager and the
process of development that took place.

If I were to be a member of a faculty at some research university, I

would be expected to pick out one particular project, one aspect of it,

and follow it for the next twenty years. I don’t want to do that! This is

much more interesting. So my point is that it took me awhile to

understand this. You have to learn from yourself what are your true

strengths and weaknesses and then follow them. And ﬁnd out what

really makes sense for you. And that’s part of what’s going on. Is that
you have people who are indoctrinated for a long time that you had to

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do that, you had to be a research scientist. If you weren’t a bench
scientist doing basic research you were worthless. And that’s just not
true. And it’s taken awhile. That’s part of the evolution of what’s going
on there; the recognition that in this day and age there is tremendous use
for people with a scientiﬁc background for a broad spectrum of things.
(R13, p. 18)

I had been doing research for almost ten years. I did various projects

which really turned out to be successful toward some product

development, had some market value. Then I had some ambition:

Okay, how I can compliment this technical expertise into business. So
deﬁnitely I was interested in knowledge of management. So I thought,

I can go and develop management skills, and learn about how to manage the
product. (R5, p. 16)

But a lot of the people we’re interviewing, even the people we’re
hiring, I think there’s only one other person who’s even ever been

in an environment where there was a product or a customer involved.
Everybody else has come out of an academic research environment
where you get your grant and your boss is your customer and what

you do goes on the shelf. Frankly, any number of them tell us that’s
why they’re leaving academia. Because they don’t like that feeling.
Because they know that what they’ve done could be useful. They’d like
to see it. They’re anxious to get it. (R7 , p. 9)

A number of participants described their managerial development as learning
through Observation, through “trial and error”, leaming from failure or mistakes,
unlearning the methodologies of science, and learning managerial principles and
techniques.

Well, scientists know their approaches to science. There are standard
approaches and everybody has their own way of accomplishing them. But
there are basically known ways to accomplish science. And a lot Of it is
trial and error. But a big part of it is observation. And then understanding
what you’ve just seen. And taking the next step. To me, business is quite
straight forward a lot of time also. But scientists just need to understand
that and they need...(pause) you know, I think it’s more experience than

anything. (R6, p. 8)

How did I learn? Observation. Watching people who are managers,
ﬁguring out what I thought they did right and what I thought they did
wrong. Making sure I did what I thought they did right, avoiding what
I thought they did wrong... SO I guess that my bottom line is I’ve

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looked at the failures and asked why have we failed and taken that

as good note as to what I don’t want to do. And I’ve looked at the few
successes and they’ve been very few in my area, and said what did
they do right, and try to do that. And then ask the question, what can I
do to make it better? What can I learn from those mistakes and those
good things that may make this an opportunity for a more successful
concern. (R2, pp. 11&13)

Another biotechnology manager echoed this observational and experimental
approach, but suggested that the cost of learning had signiﬁcance as a personal, literal
cost in the company investments that he had made.

LM: How did you learn it (management)?

Just my own way. (Laughs)

LM: What do you mean by that?

Well, it’s a kind of a trial and error way. Business plans, many

don’t make any sense. It’s all numbers here and there, you know.

But when you start spending your own money, then you get the

real understanding of what that’s all about. (R4, p. 12)

The transition from scientist to manager for some participants was linked to a
mentoring process with experienced managers. Because a number of managers had been
mentored themselves, they saw tremendous value in exposing others to managerial
knowledge and learning management under the tutelage of an experienced manager.

LM: Would you say you were mentored?

Absolutely. Without question. And I think that’s a very

critical component, the management training piece. The

transition, to make that effective, a manager needs to recognize

a desire on the part of the scientist to transition into a management

role, or at least begin to move in that direction. And then work with

that individual and identify initially, at least, smaller opportunities to

direct hands-on experience. And then increase the scope of that sort

of thing as time progresses and skills are honed and experience is

accumulated. But without question, I would say that I’ve had some
very good mentors that I still look up to as technical managers. (R14)

105

LM: How did they mentor you?

A number of things come to mind here. One is helping, to sit

down and spend time with me initially and say, what is it that you’d

like to do? I mean, what do you see yourself doing ﬁve years from now,
and help me understand that, and then I can help identify speciﬁc
activities or speciﬁc opportunities that may come along to give you
piece by piece an experience base that moves you into a direction

where ﬁve years from now you have the skill set, the experience base,
the education, the formal training that’s required to manage effectively.
That’s one aspect of it. And second to that is certainly implementation.

1 mean, these people, both of the people that I would point to as my
mentors, were...it wasn’t sit down once a year at your annual review
and ask you where you want to be ﬁve years from now. And say, well,
we’ll put some kind of a progression plan for you together. These people
were intimately and actively involved and actively seeking speciﬁc
experiences, opporttmities, projects to manage, projects to play a role

in a team, those kinds of things that just added tremendously to my
depth of experience. And so it was a very active mentoring. (R14. p. 16)

Another participant described seeking out answers from a more experienced manager.

I’m trying to learn by example. I come and talk to (manager) as
frequently as I can. About okay, I think this situation is coming up,
what should I do, can you give me some helpful hints about howl
should handle it? I also, since I don’t have time to potentially enter
any type of management class or anything, I’ve asked him for some
reading material. Just to get an idea of some management techniques.
(R9 p. 12)

Learning through failure became a familiar aspect of the scientiﬁc role that
carried into their managerial lives. One biotechnology manager described the dramatic
consequences of one managerial experiment.

We spent money, then I realized that we couldn’t sell the product. It’s
a great product, but it’s very expensive, but there are a lot of people
involved in it. The biggest problem is (large pharmaceutical). They
have the monopoly on this product . And even if we wanted to sell it,
we needed to have their blessing. They are the one who ought to buy
from us. And they didn’t show an interest, number one. Number two,
we couldn’t sell this product outside of the United States, because the
product cost is very high. So we learned the hard way. (R4, p. 6)

106

He described an unsuccessful initial public offering that changed his ﬁrm ‘3 strategy and
became an education in what not to do. After that, the managerial group proceeded much
more cautiously.

It was a hard way to learn. SO we structured the whole thing wrong...
Now, we are operating on a shoe string budget. It is a deliberate choice.
We decided, we spent half a little over half a million dollars cash and the
output is probably worth ten million dollars. But the way we did that,

we didn’t take a salary, we didn’t employ people, everything we do on
contracts. (R4, p. 6)

Making the transformation from the laboratory bench to management involved the
possibility of huge proﬁts but higher risks. The proﬁt motive became the impetus for
several participants to re-invent themselves as managers.

SO I spent two years as a chemist, realized that I wasn’t going to
make the kind of money that I wanted to make as a chemist, or at
least not the kind of chemist I was, which was a production and
R&D chemist. Went full-time to get my MBA, ﬁrll-time work,
full—time school for two years, and when I graduated from there

I spent about the next year and a half or so doing a dual role.
Running the laboratory still and doing some science but also
doing some managerial work and kind of proving myself on the
business end of the company. (R6, p. 3)

The biggest motivation factor for ...I wouldn’t say all of them,

but most scientists, is not only that they can be creative, but it will

yield into monetary beneﬁts. And I don’t want to hide that. For my

company, it is strictly for proﬁt. My goal is to make money. My

company has to make money; otherwise, it is not my company.

When I put on my company hat, my goal is to spend and make

more money. There is nothing more to it, you know. (Laughs) (R4)

Some of the same skills that contributed to making the participants excellent
scientists helped them in their management development: curiosity, intensity, patience,
the ability to learn and unleam, an experimental attitude, a comfort level with uncertainty,

the tenacity to follow a hunch to fruition. The traits fostered in the scientiﬁc realm

became a foundation for the managerial knowledge needed in life science ﬁrms.

107

The results section began with an overview of the life sciences as a backdrop to
the biotechnology industry and progressed through the construction of managerial
knowledge as it emerged in the study. A number of components related to managerial
knowledge and learning were discussed as described by the study participants. The
categories of management in the life sciences industry identiﬁed in the study include
entrepreneurship, adaptability, timeliness, collaboration, and knowledge integration.
While these categories emerged as important aspects of the managerial in a distinctive
industry, it is possible that these features of managerial knowledge may translate to other
industries, particularly emerging markets, companies with highly educated professionals,
and other new or discontinuous environments. Chapter ﬁve further delineates the study in
regard to its distinguishing aspects, new considerations of managerial knowledge, and

thoughts on future study.

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Chapter Five
Managerial Knowledge and Learning: The Re-invention of Self
Conclusions and Considerations

The concept of successful management practices has captured the imaginations of
many contemporary writers and researchers, yet discussions of the knowledge needs of
the contemporary manager remain elusive. The construction of managerial knowledge
appears to involve an extensive amount of information and experiences gathered from a
rich supply of sources. Consequently, every manager represents a compendium of learned
skills and observations, abstract and often unarticulated knowledge as well as explicit
forms of information. This suggests that the concept of managerial knowledge, the act of
management, and the consideration of the managerial role may be most insightfully
discussed by managers who participate daily in interpreting the managerial role and
managerial knowledge.

The study focused on the experiences of managers and their interpretations of
attributes for successﬁrl managerial work in the context of an emerging and competitive
industry. The relatively recent development of life science ﬁrms provided an opportunity
to study the role of the manager in an industry characterized by signiﬁcant change,
innovation, and competition. The study concentrated on the development, meaning, and
implementation of managerial knowledge as it occurs within the parameters of small and
emerging biotechnology ﬁrms. The categories that were found to be integral aspects of
the successful managerial role in biotechnology ﬁrms included entrepreneurship,
adaptability, timeliness, collaboration, and knowledge integration, with its subcategories

of knowledge management, knowledge development, and knowledge diffusion.

109

 

r Managerial Knowledge In Biotechnology Firms

Knowledge

 

 

The present study is characterized by its attempt to study current managerial
practices and behavior and its reliance on the descriptions of participants. It provides a
description of the managerial role from the perspective of those who are constructing it.
The experience of management in biotechnology offers an understanding of management
as a re-invention of the professional role. Managers described managerial knowledge in
the context of a managerial learning experience that has implications for learning theory
and may advance discussion of situated learning, informal learning, and workplace
learning.

Importantly, the results of this study suggest an understanding of the manager
which may enlarge the sphere of management as it is taught and experienced. The
management of biotechnology ﬁrms suggested by this study is a highly interactive
process, collaborative, and based in the management of knowledge. This distinguishes the
results from earlier studies of managerial behavior that focused on the controlling and
directing functions of the manager. Hence, the biotechnology managers is seen as the
integrator of diverse knowledge sets, educator to investors, employees, and clients, and
facilitator of fum processes in a way that assists in recreating and updating the vision of

the managerial role.

110

The context of the managerial role in life science ﬁrms, as described by
participants, was inﬂuenced by two omnipresent elements: scientiﬁc knowledge and the
symbolic role of time. Scientiﬁc knowledge as the basis for life science ﬁrms determined,
to a great extent, the ﬁrm’s resources and capability. The element of time is symbolic in
the sense that it creates constraints for managers and scientists and a quality of urgency in
many aspects of biotechnology ﬁrms. The construction of managerial knowledge was
inﬂuenced by these two factors, including the depth and breadth of the ﬁrm’s scientiﬁc
knowledge and the length of time that deﬁned project development. Managers described
what they had learned about successful management practices in emerging biotechnology
ﬁrms, and the qualities that together created their knowledge base.

The results of this study indicate that management in biotechnology ﬁrms
involves four key areas: management of scientiﬁc processes, management of scientiﬁc
personnel, management of ﬁrm strategy, and management of organizational knowledge.
The ﬁrst three aspects of management are congruous with the traditional literature of
management, but the fourth, management of organizational knowledge, corroborates a
more recent perspective on the managerial role as that of knowledge manager. The
biotechnology manager particularly embodies this new role because new knowledge and
innovation are so vital to the work of life science ﬁrms. On a larger scale, the
reconceptualization of the managerial role as that of knowledge integrator, developer, and
diffuser within the ﬁrm may offer new models for management education, executive
searches, and organizational design.

In re-inventing themselves as biotechnology managers, several participants had

pursued managerial knowledge in the form of the MBA or short executive development

111

courses. Most, however, learned management as they experienced it: by observation, by
working with managers who mentored them, and, in the transition from scientist to
manager, by developing an intense commitment to the ﬁrm, its products, and its
personnel. Some of the same skills that made them excellent scientists helped them in
their management development: curiosity, intensity, patience, the ability to learn and
unleam, an experimental attitude, a comfort level with uncertainty, and the tenacity to
follow a hunch to fruition. The traits fostered in the scientiﬁc realm became a foundation
for the managerial knowledge needed in life science ﬁrms.

Managerial knowledge, according to the biotechnology managers, was frequently
a product of trial and error learning, which might be likened to a daily experiment in
management. Most of the experiment was conducted within the familiar community of
scientists, yet they also described the less familiar world of business start-ups and venture
capitalists. These managerial challenges were learned by observation, trial and error, and
by being actively engaged in the tasks of management. The categories of
entrepreneurship, adaptability, timeliness, collaboration, and knowledge integration were
learned extensions of the scientiﬁc role, and allowed managers to reconﬁgure knowledge
and re-invent themselves into the role of managers. Problems that were viewed
previously as scientists could be approached from different angles as managers. Together,
the two perspectives merged and complemented each other, even as managers became
less expert in scientiﬁc areas because of their managerial responsibilities.

The category of entrepreneurship emerged as a characteristic integral to the
successful biotechnology manager. This involved a fundamental commitment to advance

the ﬁrm, and inﬂuencing the scientiﬁc endeavor to be applied, competitive, and fast-

112

paced. These elements require the manager in life science to be very responsive to the
scientiﬁc process, the scientists, and the environment. Entrepreneurship, as suggested by
the participants, also requires an inveterate devotion to effectively utilizing ﬁrm capital,
managing ﬁrm resources responsibly, and ﬁnancial growth.

The element of entrepreneurial risk-taking was evident as participants described
the possibility of failure that appears to lurk alongside nearly every project in small
biotechnology ﬁrms. Just as scientists learn successful formulas through failure and
experimentation, the manager in the life sciences accepts the challenge of failure and
aggressively pursues his or her goals. The life sciences manager often has a scientiﬁc
background that is ﬁrmly grounded in work that is experimental, built on hypotheses, and
subject to a variety of unknown and organic inﬂuences. Risk-taking is a learned aspect of
the work environment as scientists that may be transferable to the managerial role.

Making the transformation from the laboratory bench to management involved the
possibility of huge proﬁts but higher risks. The proﬁt motive became the impetus for
several participants to re-invent themselves as managers. The willingness to foster
innovation as expressed by participants was accompanied by a sense of adventure and
exhilaration encountered as pioneers in start-up ventures and biotechnology discoveries.
Participants often communicated an almost palpable excitement about their work and
fostering product development. The opportunity to live in both the scientiﬁc world and
the managerial world offered the managers in the study the ability to span organizational
and disciplinary boundaries and borrow insights from each.

While the goal to create a successful and competitive product was a foremost

concern, participants also expressed a desire to design a product that would beneﬁt others

113

and solve human, animal, and plant problems. The combination of corporate
aggressiveness and social responsibility was a remarkable aspect of the work of managers
and scientsts in life science ﬁrms. The ability to build relationships within the ﬁrm, with
other ﬁrms, and other parts of the scientiﬁc community appears to be an important role
for managers in biotechnology ﬁrms. The specialization of most ﬁrms can either isolate
them or engender alliances with other niche ﬁrms, universities, and large bio-
pharrnaceuticals, agricultural-biotechnology ﬁrms, information technology ﬁrms, or
hardware manufacturers. Creating corporate avenues for scientists to pursue hunches is
another way for management to formalize the creative process, whether it means
providing alternative laboratories for scientists or committees for reviewing new
concepts.

In the uncertain world of the life sciences, the successful manager needs to be
highly cognizant of the many variables that can change the course of a project or the
focus of the ﬁrm. While the importance of concentrating on a goal cannot be overlooked,
participants conveyed a sense for the mutable characteristics of their work that required
an openness to change and a responsiveness to the environment. The ability to improvise
appears to be a management skill that is effective in these circumstances. One strategy
may not last for long, and long-range planning was an activity that participants rarely
discussed or appeared to be engaged in. The many roles that life science managers took
on required them to be agile and relatively comfortable in the ambiguous atmosphere of
biological ventures. Much like the variability of the processes they managed, the
managers identiﬁed their roles as evolving, subject to the inﬂuences of time, money,

intellectual capital, and other resources.

114

The spirit of adaptability in biotechnology managers appeared to be a learned
ability and an outgrowth of their scientiﬁc backgrounds. Learning through failure became
a familiar aspect of the scientiﬁc role that carried into their managerial lives. In the
frequently precarious environment of biotechnology, managers indicated that the ability
to be adaptable was an essential competency. Participants exhibited an adeptness at
responding to change (using the terms “nimble” and descriptions Of their “many hats”)
and moving forward despite obstacles.

The category of timeliness was originally titled temporality, a concept that evoked
the abstract nature of time in relation to the managerial role. As the results of the study
were closely examined for a more precise deﬁnition, the term “time management” was
considered. However, the concept of time management seemed to imply that time in
biotechnology was implicitly capable of being controlled by the manager, when in fact
aspects of it could be only be guided and shaped by the managerial process. In the
pharmaceutical life sciences, for instance, managerial decisions are very much controlled
by the timeframes of drug trials and patent life cycles. That is why the term of
“timeliness” was chosen to reﬂect a sense of calculated, appropriate, and opportunistic
use of time based on strategic managerial knowledge Of the products, personnel and
environment of the life sciences.

The category of timeliness implies an ability to use time advantageously, a
managerial trait that is particularly useful in biotechnology ﬁrms. Time as it occurs in the
environment of biotechnology appears to have both limiting and delimiting effect on
managerial progress and scientiﬁc products. Timelines for scientiﬁc milestones may

require strict adherence to speciﬁc procedures under narrow windows of time. Or

115

progress may be slow, whether through the starts and stops of scientiﬁc testing or
adherence to approval standards. There is a sense of the uncontrollable in aspects of their
work that deﬁne the manager’s role and the managerial knowledge and competencies that
lend themselves to successful management in life science ﬁrms. Time is a great
contributor to the lack of control that managers described. Consequently, managers
described the need to adapt themselves to the pace of commercial science, or try to shape
or speed its progress, and continuously update their roles to match the pace and the
requirements of their industry.

In describing the category of collaboration, scientists and managers discussed a
common knowledge set of science and scientiﬁc concerns that was shared between
members of the ﬁrm. This sense of a common worldview provided a platform for shared
understandings and enhanced the managerial experience for participants. Managers either
shared a common scientiﬁc bond with scientists or found ways to foster collaborative
arrangements for ﬁrm advantage. Managers who did not have a scientiﬁc background
stressed the need to build good working relationships with scientists, cultivate mutual
respect and cooperation, and ﬁnd areas of common concern to bridge the gaps. In all
cases, participants suggested the importance of supporting multidisciplinary teams and an
interactive, egalitarian culture where views could be expressed freely.

Although the community of scientists shares similar backgrounds, the
multidisciplinary environment of biotechnology ﬁrms offers new challenges for sharing
information and collaboration with others. As one director of research commented, “If
you don’t know how to communicate what you scientiﬁcally determine, then what good

is it?” (R3, p. 12) Facilitating teams of scientists and others from sometimes very diverse

116

disciplines is one of the tasks that the biotechnology manager must learn in order to be
effective. Managers spoke of the need to coalesce personnel around critical issues.

The environment of small biotechnology ﬁrms appears to be framed by
informality, trust, and a sense of community that is difficult to duplicate in a large
corporate setting, except within departments or small divisions. This is magniﬁed by the
lack of hierarchy and many organizational roles that managers may have in the course of
the ﬁrm start-up and product cycles. The function of teamwork and the coordinating role ,4
that managers have in forming teams often combines knowledge streams and contributes I
to working together on life science solutions. Building teams and promoting informal

dialogue developed effective working strategies between members. Collaborative

 

arrangements extended to other parts of the scientiﬁc community and affiliations with
biotechnology manufacturers. The sense of community that was conveyed by participants
is sustained by a commitment that values human capital within the ﬁrm and goodwill
toward the eventual consumers of their products.

The role of manager as knowledge integrator involves the management of
knowledge within the ﬁrm, the development of knowledge-based strategies, and the H

diffusion of knowledge through the promotion and communication of information within

 

and outside the ﬁrm. For life science managers, the management of intellectual capital i
becomes critical to the ﬁrm’s success, and the effective synthesis of scientiﬁc and b
managerial knowledge will have a lasting inﬂuence on the direction of the ﬁrm.

The knowledge management that participants described was the management of
expertise by bringing together diverse skill sets and developing ﬁrm capacity through

teamwork. Sometimes this might involve acquiring new knowledge by hiring scientiﬁc

117

personnel with a speciﬁc knowledge base, other times it might be in combining various
talents to focus on applied research toward a ﬁrm goal. Managing knowledge in
biotechnology ﬁrms involves the coordinating of the intellectual and human expectations
for staff members, advancing timelines for product development, and addressing mutual
concerns. Particularly because of the rapid pace of scientiﬁc knowledge, managers who
move away from the laboratory quickly discover the difﬁculty of keeping scientiﬁcally
current. They ﬁnd themselves in the position of non—experts who must rely on the
expertise of others, inﬂuencing and guiding specialized knowledge, taking it to a
conclusion that is applied, useful, and tangible.

There are three ways in which life science managers described developing
knowledge in others: through mentoring, through motivating and creating competition,
and through educating others, both scientists and consumers. Knowledge development
proved to be an important aspect of the managerial role, since it could provide others with
opportunities for professional grth and an understanding of managerial knowledge.
Some of the mechanisms that managers employed in knowledge development were
simply keeping open books regarding budgets and ﬁrm direction, answering questions,
and holding frequent meetings where timelines and strategies were discussed.
Participants described how they harness potential knowledge by pushing scientiﬁc
personnel toward the next goal and encouraging competition between them. Participants
likened the managerial role to an educator, speaking to potential investor and customers,
educating them in the application and effectiveness of products.

Knowledge diffusion occurs through the communication and sharing of

information from within the ﬁrm and from the scientiﬁc community. Participants

118

suggested that biotechnology managers need to have the capacity to bridge scientiﬁc
disciplines and encourage the exchange of information between various part of the ﬁrm
for competitive advantage. Competitive intelligence is gained through continuous
surveillance of product development and scientiﬁc discoveries on the Internet, through
scientiﬁc journals and newspapers, scientiﬁc conferences and medical meetings,
discussions with potential consumers, and by scanning the environment for scientiﬁc and
social concerns. Because ﬁrm success depends on merged understandings, successful
managers of life science ﬁrms create opportunities for knowledge difﬁrsion by
implementing strategies for communicating discoveries and knowledge across the ﬁrm.

The results of the present study, the managerial knowledge categories of
entrepreneurship, adaptability, timeliness, collaboration, and knowledge integration,
involve unique conclusions on the contemporary managerial role. A review of texts based
on managerial behavior, organization design, and current management practices does not
reveal any one study with similar results. A number of authors, however, have indicated
agreement with several of the categories that emerged in the study, as discussed in the
literature review. Even so, despite the great number of new and emerging technology and
knowledge-based organizations being created such as internet-based companies and
biotechnology ﬁrms, there is little evidence of any managerial research being done that
involves these companies. There appears to be much more research on the Organizational
level than on the individual managerial role.

The results Of this study offer a valuable contribution to management studies
because they deﬁne the managerial role in terms of managerial knowledge and learning.

At a time when organizational knowledge is increasingly recognized and cultivated, the

119

managerial role appears to be a primary conduit for implementing organizational
learning. The results indicate that re-inventing the manager as knowledge manager,
developer, and diffuser is an important aspect of the managerial role in biotechnology
ﬁrms. These competencies, combined with entrepreneurism, adaptability, timeliness, and
collaboration may point the way to new perspectives on management.

The conceptual model of the effective manager that exists today may undergo
signiﬁcant changes in the future. Several researchers suggest that the concept of
management is historically based, rooted in speciﬁc timeframes that may be likened to
managerial eras (duGay, Salaman, Rees 1996; Morgan 1988). Some have even proposed
that the use of the word “competency” may focus unnecessarily on “past successes rather
than future challenges” (Spreitzer, McCall, Mahoney 1997). The use of generic models of
competencies (Boyatzis 1982) that attempt to generalize the managerial role regardless of
managerial level, industry, company size, or purpose of the ﬁrm may not ﬁrlly address
the nuances of the managerial knowledge. Instead, Bartlett and Ghoshal suggest a view of
management that considers the managerial level and encourages individual competencies
(1997). Thus, an “interpretive approach” has been suggested in the context of this study
and other recent research (Sandberg 2000) that proposes a phenomenological view of
competence based on management as it is experienced.

There appears to be a need to examine the managerial role as it relates to
organizational design, learning, and change. A great deal of the literature devoted to ﬁrm
strategies infers aspects of managerial knowledge that transfer into ﬁrm goals. Just as
organizational learning is grounded in individual learning, so must the origin of ﬁrm

capability be based on individual or team competencies. While the literature of

120

organizational learning is very compelling, an understanding of managerial knowledge
may provide insights in regard to learning within organizations. Understanding what
managers know and how they use this knowledge to address ﬁrm issues may also offer a
framework for the literature of management education and theory. Beyond the
instrumental courses in ﬁnance, accounting, and information systems that are required in
most MBA programs, what are the managerial knowledge sets that provide behavioral
and intellectual capabilities across disciplines?

The results of the study, the categories of entrepreneurship, adaptability,
timeliness, collaboration and knowledge integration were competencies advantageous in
the management of biotechnology ﬁrms. This knowledge set involves a number of tacit
and abstract managerial characteristics that may not be found in traditional management
training programs. Yet this study suggests that these skills appear to be very effective in
the management Of biotechnology ﬁrms, and these same competencies may be highly
desirable in other organizations. Consequently, the development of this type of
managerial learning may bear consideration in management programs. The dilemma that
management educators may face may be how to best convey, assess, and encourage the
learning of skills that are internally and behaviorally based in the management
curriculum.

More than rudimentary understandings of traditional and quantitative business
subjects, participants indicated that the characteristics found in the results chapter were
the tools of managerial knowledge. The application of these managerial competencies in
the curriculum of graduate management programs and professional development settings

may challenge current constructs Of management education. The results of the study offer

121

a context for understanding the managerial role in terms of characteristics that have been
labeled “soft skills” in many MBA programs. Yet if these skills provide the richest
managerial knowledge that biotechnology managers recognize, perhaps there should be
more consideration of these skills and appropriate mechanisms for learning them.
Classroom techniques such as simulations, role-playing, and interactive “reality-based”
case studies may Offer possibilities for teaching competencies in entrepreneurship,
adaptability, timeliness, collaboration, and knowledge integration strategies.

While the study results suggest new perspectives in management teaching and
concepts Of the managerial role, there are also implications for the ﬁeld of education.
Since the managerial learning that participants described was essentially the product of
informal learning, there is much to be learned about learning as it is experienced
professionally. This involves issues of how competency is built on-the-job and the basis
for competencies in particular professions. Every professional arena has expectations for
the competencies and knowledge sets of its members. How do members Of professional
communities come to know the criteria of their professions without the beneﬁt of
codiﬁed and formal education? This study has ramiﬁcations for researchers in
experiential, situated, and adult learning as well as professional education.

There are several areas that the study may not fully represent. The present study is
based on a relatively small number of participants and companies, even thOugh the texts
of the interviews provide a rich ethnographic description of managerial conditions and
practices. Also, the study relied on one industry, although many a range of specialties in

the industry were represented. Thus, it may not be generalizable to other industries or

122

managers in general, although there has been an attempt to link to other research that
does confirm that the similar conclusions have been reached by a number of researchers.

Several other research domains bear mention here because Of their relativity to the
subject matter and their absence. The concept of managerial identity has been implicated
in the discussion of the managerial role and its construction. The psychological literature
on identity is massive, and it was not brought into consideration in the context of this
study. While this is a study involving questions of the re-invention of identity, the chosen
focus was on components of managerial knowledge and learning. Also, the literature of
leadership, involving leadership theories and the role of the leader was not delineated
from the management literature. The researcher has chosen to follow the Sayles’
argument that suggests that every manager is a leader, and every leader a manager. While
it can be debated that this varies based on managerial level and expertise, in many
contemporary workplaces the old hierarchies have changed and many workers previously
considered non-management are making managerial-like decisions. This redeﬁnition of
roles may have an impact on many aspects of the management literature.

This study suggests that further research on successful management practices and
managerial knowledge is needed to more fully understand current and ﬁrture managerial
roles. It is intended to provide a view toward the future of the managerial role in
relationship to the scope of managerial knowledge and learning. Signiﬁcantly, the
managerial role in knowledge integration represents the most recent advancements in the
research and offers a perspective on the managerial role in the management,
development, and diffusion of information. While it is particularly appropriate that the

manager in a knowledge-intensive life sciences ﬁrm is associated with a knowledge

123

integrator role, this aspect Of managerial knowledge may lend itself to many other
applications. Further research into managerial knowledge and learning that integrates
discussion across disciplines may promote new understandings of the managerial role and

the characteristics that will be necessary for managers of the future.

- “'-.-='.' (“I“)!

 

 

124

APPENDIX A

Letter to Prospective Participants

Date

Name

Title

Company
Address

City, State, Zip

Dear

Your assistance is requested for an exploratory study that will focus on the management
challenges facing the life science community in Michigan. Your views and those of
others in your ﬁrm will provide important perspectives in addressing this topic.

You may ask -— why is this study being undertaken? In my role as the Director of a
graduate business program at Michigan State University, I have observed an increased
interest in management education by members of the life sciences community. In my
doctoral research toward the Ph.D. at MSU, I would like to interview scientists and
managers in order to develop an understanding of the management requirements of life
science ﬁrms.

Your commitment of time will include an interview of approximately one hour in length.
Since my study involves the perspectives of both scientists and managers, I would
appreciate your assistance in identifying other individuals at your ﬁrm who may
contribute to the study. All interviews will be entirely conﬁdential and will not involve
proprietary company data. The major ﬁndings Of my study will be made available to
all of the participants and may be made available to organizations such as the Michigan
Biotechnology Association and others affiliated with the life sciences community.

In mid-August, I will be contacting you regarding your participation in the exploratory
study. Thank you for your consideration. I look forward to talking with you soon.

Sincerely,

Lucy Maillette

125

APPENDIX B

Research Protocol
1. Before we begin, I’d like to ask you some background questions.

A. Approximately when was the company founded?

B. What is the size of the ﬁrm, in terms of employees?

C. Approximately how many scientists?

D. What are your primary responsibilities at the _ company?

2. In your Opinion, are there any universal qualities that a successful manager of a
life sciences ﬁrm needs to possess? Can you please describe these? Are there
speciﬁc skills or knowledge that is needed? How are they learned? Please
describe them.

3. Please describe the qualities that a research scientist needs to successfully Operate
in a life sciences ﬁrm. Are there speciﬁc skills or knowledge that are needed?
How are they learned? Please describe them.

4. Do scientists in biotech ﬁrms need to be more aware of management and
managerial concerns? What do they generally need to know? How should they
learn about it? Do you think the role of the research scientist is changing? Please
explain brieﬂy.

5. What are some of the mutual company concerns that managers and scientists
share at (company name)? What are they? How are these concerns

communicated?

6. In facing the future, what do you think are the major challenges that you believe
your company will have?

Thank you for your participation in this interview. May I contact you later if I have
questions or need to clarify any aspects of the interview?

126

APPENDIX C

Consent F cm

The purpose of this research study is to explore aspects of management from the
perspective of scientists and managers in life science ﬁrms. The study will focus on the
management issues, challenges, and requirements associated with life science fums. Your
participation in this research study will involve an interview and possible follow-up for
clariﬁcation purposes. Your participation will not require proprietary company
information.

All information will be kept conﬁdential by the researcher and research results will not be
personally identiﬁable. Your privacy will be protected to the maximum extent allowable
by law. The interview will be tape recorded strictly for the purposes of providing accurate
information for the research study.

As a participant in this study, major research ﬁndings will be made available to you. This
information may prove useful to you in your role as a scientist or manager. Maj or
ﬁndings may also be made available to organizations and others associated with the life
sciences industry.

Your responsibility as a participant is to respond honestly and thoughtfully in the
interview process. In order to comply with Michigan State University requirements for
research involving human subjects, it is necessary that you read and Sign this form prior
to your participation. Your signature indicates that you are voluntarily participating in
this study. There will be no penalty or loss Of beneﬁts if you decide to withdraw from
participation in the study.

If you have questions or comments regarding your participation in this research study,
please contact Lucy Maillette at (517) 355-7603. Questions regarding your rights as a
participant in this research may be directed to the Chairperson of the Institutional Review
Board of the University Committee on Research Involving Human Subjects (UCRIHS) at
Michigan State University, Dr. David Wright, at (517) 355-2180.

I certify that I have read and understood the rights and responsibilities of a participant
in this research, and voluntarily agree to participate in the study.

 

Signature

 

 

Please print your name Date

127

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