HARVARD STUDIES IN BUSINESS HISTORY
Cover: Shaping the Industrial Century: The Remarkable Story of the Evolution of the Modern Chemical and Pharmaceutical Industries, from Harvard University PressCover: Shaping the Industrial Century in HARDCOVER

Harvard Studies in Business History 46

Shaping the Industrial Century

The Remarkable Story of the Evolution of the Modern Chemical and Pharmaceutical Industries

Product Details

HARDCOVER

$31.50 • £27.95 • €28.95

ISBN 9780674017207

Publication Date: 04/30/2004

Short

384 pages

6-1/8 x 9-1/4 inches

7 tables, 3 charts

Harvard Studies in Business History

World

Also Available As

Jacket: Shaping the Industrial Century

PAPERBACK | $30.50

ISBN 9780674032217

Short

Add to Cart

Media Requests:

Related Subjects

The dean of business historians continues his masterful chronicle of the transforming revolutions of the twentieth century begun in Inventing the Electronic Century.

Alfred Chandler argues that only with consistent attention to research and development and an emphasis on long-term corporate strategies could firms remain successful over time. He details these processes for nearly every major chemical and pharmaceutical firm, demonstrating why some companies forged ahead while others failed.

By the end of World War II, the chemical and pharmaceutical industries were transformed by the commercializing of new learning, the petrochemical and the antibiotic revolutions. But by the 1970s, chemical science was no longer providing the new learning necessary to commercialize more products, although new directions flourished in the pharmaceutical industries. In the 1980s, major drug companies, including Eli Lilly, Merck, and Schering Plough, commercialized the first biotechnology products, and as the twenty-first century began, the infrastructure of this biotechnology revolution was comparable to that of the second industrial revolution just before World War I and the information revolution of the 1960s. Shaping the Industrial Century is a major contribution to our understanding of the most dynamic industries of the modern era.

Recent News

Black lives matter. Black voices matter. A statement from HUP »

From Our Blog

Jacket: Iron and Blood: A Military History of the German-Speaking Peoples since 1500, by Peter Wilson, from Harvard University Press

A Lesson in German Military History with Peter Wilson

In his landmark book Iron and Blood: A Military History of the German-Speaking Peoples since 1500, acclaimed historian Peter H. Wilson offers a masterful reappraisal of German militarism and warfighting over the last five centuries, leading to the rise of Prussia and the world wars. Below, Wilson answers our questions about this complex history,