This sub-section briefly presents the methods of collecting data and the data gathered.
There are two points concerning the process of data collection. First of all, the data were collected and further analysed while keeping in mind the concern with maintaining ‘a chain of evidence’ (Yin 2003, pp. 105-106). The data collection particularly considered the direct relevance between the original research issue, its theoretical and conceptual
68 One R&D-intensive domestic company, SK Chemical, was excluded from the study due to the difficulty in collecting and clarifying data. This company is an affiliate of the SK Group, a Chaebol, and operates bio and pharmaceutical R&D as a business unit.
69 Complementary analysis: That is, observation of nine firms can lead to the possibility of identifying variety (similarities/differences) in latecomer firms’ transformation toward an innovation-generating firm.
70 Observation of multi-case firms is likely to be more reflective in the many SME-led industries, such as KoPI, compared to monopolistic or oligopolistic industries. The latter industries are basically simpler than the former in terms of sampling and interpreting the sectoral change by focusing on one or two large companies. Thus, a few companies’ innovation movements are easily treated as sectoral innovation (e.g.
most of Korea’s caught-up industries such as electronics, ICTs and automobiles), giving an impression of the industry as an autonomous entity itself.
framing in the two embedded units of analysis, and the data collected. Second, as many case studies carefully address, data collection was conducted to acquire a maximum level of data triangulation.
(i) Content of data collected
The data were collected to answer the research questions, drawing on the conceptual framework and its focus on the two dimensions of the analysis: the macro-level impact of policy on exploratory learning and micro-level firms’ learning patterns. In terms of the macro-level dimension, data were gathered regarding the changing market selection environment and changed relationship between innovation actors in dealing with NRDPs under the S&T policy reform (Table 3.2). In terms of the firm-level perspective, data about new drug development processes and about relevant organisational processes of the nine case firms were collected (Table 3.3).
Table 3.2: Types of data about macro-level environmental conditions
Dimension of data Types of data collected
Innovation systems
Market environment
∙ Institutional change: IPR regime and NHI system
∙ Technological change: influence of biotechnology
∙ Market data: Market segments and products
NRDPs
∙ National S&T and industrial policies
∙ Elements of innovation systems
∙ NRDPs surrounding the KoPI and biotechnology
∙ Relationship between innovation actors
∙ Incentive structure and evaluation pattern
Table 3.3: Types of data about micro-level firms
Dimension of data Types of data collected
Firms
R&D process
∙ History of case firms’ R&D
∙ New drug R&D processes
∙ Commercialisation of new drugs developed
∙ Patent/publication trend
Organisational mechanism
∙ Organisational structure of R&D centre
∙ Top management’s response on new drug R&D
∙ Organisational inertia and researchers’ mindset
(ii) Methods of data collection
The data were collected mainly through three approaches: a) interviews, b) secondary data, and c) additional patent/publication information. Taking the three approaches was expected to provide at least a minimum level of reliability of the data (i.e., the convergence of the data). Moreover, attempts were made to secure the validity of the data by cross-checking the viewpoints of different types of concerned innovation actors on the patterns of institutional influence, technological learning and industrial transition.
In terms of interviews, both open-ended and semi-structured interviews were conducted during the two fieldwork periods (Table 3.4). The use of both types of interviews tended to generate unpredicted or more in-depth information as well as data that the fieldwork originally aimed to gather. Of the 55 interviews conducted, 44 were recorded; the remainder were conducted with note-taking due to the rules of the organisations and personal preference of the interviewees.
Table 3.4: Overview of interviews71
Fieldwork Area of interviewee
(No. of interviews) Period
First round 13 Firms - DBFs and large firms (17) 6 GRIs (10)
5 Universities (5)
Aug, 2008 ~ Oct, 2008 Feb, 2009
Second round 7 Domestic pharmaceutical firms (14) 2 Big Pharma (2)
3DBFs (4)
Sep, 2010 ~ Oct, 2010
4 e-mail interviews and 2 anonymous interviewees 2010, 2011 and 2013 During the initial fieldwork, interviews were mainly conducted with people outside pharmaceutical firms, such as those at DBFs, universities and GRIs. The DBFs, universities and GRIs interviewed consisted of three categories. The first group were those who participated in long term NRDPs, mainly the three Frontier Programmes that included new drug R&D. The second group were those who had experience of public-private collaboration and technology transfer. It was aimed to complement the practical limitation between the public and private interaction in the three NRDPs.72 The last group involved the policy and industry researchers of the pharmaceutical and biotechnological sectors, governmental officers, and researchers of Big Pharma, who previously experienced the KoPI or NRDPs. In doing so, data were expected to identify the overall
71 See Appendix 2 for more details of the interviewees, and Appendices 3 and 4 for the questionnaire and survey.
72 As will be seen, most NRDPs containing public and private actors have been conducted with few horizontal collaborations, rather in the way of sub-contractors.
institutional conditions surrounding the innovation activity in the KoPI and operational mechanisms of NRDPs.
The second round of fieldwork gathered data about the firms’ exploratory learning involved in new drug R&D by focusing on the new drug development processes and strategies, and organisational perspectives. In addition, the data of the operational pattern of the NRDPs were also gathered in the view of the KoPI.
Most interviewees, including policy-side people, were junior and senior level PhD holders.
This was due to the characteristics of the industry, which requires personnel with higher levels of scientific knowledge. For example, all project leaders of NRDPs, CEOs of DBFs and CTOs of pharmaceutical firms are PhD researchers. Herein, it should be noted that there was little need to interview young (PhD) researchers because the data collection focused on historical experiences of the transition and only the senior researchers had experienced the transitional period. Moreover, because the unit of the analysis was basically the firm and system levels and all companies that had operated small-sized R&D organisations, detailed investigation of the (short experience) individual researcher’s behavioural pattern (at the lower levels of the organisational hierarchy) appeared to be unnecessary for this study.73
b) In terms of secondary data, all kinds of secondary data sources were used for data acquisition, ranging from the government, public and private institutes’ policy reports, firms’ annual reports and newspapers, to conference and exhibition attendance. In particular, two types of secondary data sources were unexpectedly useful. First were the web pages that stored video clips of interviews with people from industrial and academic biotechnology communities and the KoPI. These included researchers’ in-depth comments about their professional communities.74 Second, various industry-specific business newspapers provided complementary information of the NRDPs and case firms.75
73 In addition, conducting surveys was attempted during both fieldwork periods. However, the response rate was not meaningful and responses were mainly obtained from CEOs, CTOs or project leaders. As noted, because their R&D organisations were mostly small or medium sized, these respondents seemed to feel no need to circulate survey questionnaires to their researchers, as they made sure that they were aware of most critical R&D situations in the company as the representative respondents. As a result, the data gathered from the survey were not explicitly used for an empirical analysis, but were used as complementary data for the qualitative analysis and discussion.
74 In the professional area of biotechnology, including pharmaceutical R&D in Korea, there has been a particularly influential cyber community (BRIC: Biological Research Information Center, http://bric.postech.ac.kr/). For example, the scientific fraud of stem cell research led by Dr Hwang’s team was first raised and scientifically refuted by anonymous young and junior researchers in the cyber community.
75 In total, 18 out of 24 pharmaceutical and health care specific business newspapers were used over the research period.
c) In terms of patent information, data for patent applications sent to the Korea Patent Office by the nine case firms, and their publication data acquired from Web of Science, were compared with qualitative data gathered regarding the exploration pattern. The patent and publication data were expected to provide the opportunity to confirm and complement the contents of interviews and qualitative data gathered from other sources.