Large pharmaceutical firms, biotechnology firms, publicly funded research
organisations and financial organisations which are inseparably connected and located
in a few key regions have built a hierarchical pharma-biotech complex. It is argued
that large corporations establish networks to access regionally concentrated
knowledge bases. These networks consist of money flows, knowledge and personnel. By
establishing such networks, large firms considerably shape and interconnect the
development dynamics in the regions in which they have strategic assets. The paper
reveals how the economic development trajectories of the urban regions of Basel, New
Jersey and Boston are connected by large pharmaceutical firms and the industrial
dynamics of the combined pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. Such strong
corporate networks result in the globally combined and interdependent development of
urban regions.
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