Shaping the Industrial Century: The Remarkable Story of the Evolution of the Modern Chemical and Pharmaceutical Industries.

SHAPING THE INDUSTRIAL CENTURY: The Remarkable Story of the Evolution of the Modern Chemical and Pharmaceutical Industries

ALFRED D. CHANDLER JR.

Business historian Chandler heralds the biotech revolution at the dawn of the 21st century and describes it in terms of contributions by the modern chemical and pharmaceutical industries. The author, a Harvard Business School professor, contends that all successful companies in these industries have been driven by new learning and that, in fact, when opportunities for new learning declined, so have companies. It was the biotech revolution starting in the 1980s that enabled companies such as Merck, Schering Plough, and Eli Lilly to create a revolution comparable to the second industrial revolution of the early 1900s. Chandler details such a history for nearly every major chemical and pharmaceutical firm in the United States and Europe. This is an academic text by a historian looking deeply into science-business themes. Harvard University Press, 2005, 384 p., hardcover, $29.95.