Institutionalizing technoscience: Post-genomic technologies and the case of systems biology

Abstract

► Addresses innovation work in pharmaceutical industry. ► Examines the shifts from small-molecule therapies to new analytical systems biology and biocomputation. ► Points at the analytical merits of institutional theory when studying changes in innovation practices. Somewhat counter-intuitively, new drug development productivity has fallen at major pharmaceutical companies during the period of swift growth in scientific know-how during the last two decades. After substantial hype, genomics has been complemented by post-genomic technologies serving as the new hope for the future in terms of producing new therapies. Such post-genomic technologies, including systems biology and other biocomputational and bioinformatics approaches, are embedded in institutional logics both drawing on shared or idiosyncratic enactments of historical conditions and expectations for the future. This paper reports on a study based on interviews with scientists at a major pharmaceutical company, three biotechnology firms, and two academic research universities, suggesting that technoscientific approaches and frameworks are embedded in rhetoric advancing institutional logics constituting the organizing principles that shape the behavior of the actors in a field. Such rhetoric consists of narratives combining accounts of practices and their merits and shortcomings, beliefs, professional ideologies, and historical accomplishments.