Learning from the Giants: Critical Success Factors for Pharmaceutical EMNEs From India

Abstract

Indian pharmaceutical EMNEs, with significant cost competitiveness, have the potential to partially address the vexing problems of global healthcare industry, including rising cost of the healthcare. In this context, we explore the Critical Success Factors (CSFs) of the pharmaceutical industry, which can help firms focus their resources sharply to break-out faster. Using case study method, we studied two global dominant firms for identifying industry CSFs. Product innovation capabilities emerged as the most important CSF, having the potential to provide competitive advantage for long-term competitiveness of the firms. Other two factors that emerged as CSFs are marketing capabilities and financial capabilities. The study contributes to the literature by linking the success factors to firm capabilities and also specifically to international business literature of EMNE capability building. The study also has implications to practitioners in strategic decision making.