The Role of Intermediary Institutions in the Emergence of Biopharma Industry in Iran

Currently about 20 recombinants of biopharmaceuticals are produced in Iran only after less than 20 years of the beginning of sporadic activities in this field. Iran has exceptional growth in this area which led to the emergence of an independent industry. In these twenty years several companies have been established and Iran managed to be the second ranked in the world in the production of some of the special biopharmaceuticals. In this article, we considered the emergence of the biopharma industry in Iran as a special case study and investigated the case through a qualitative exploratory study. We collected the experimental data conducting 30 exploratory semi-structured interviews and analyzed it using thematic analysis methodology. Our results show small and powerful communities among middle managers at university and government has led to the collective institutional entrepreneurship between government and academics, and this is the starting point for the emergence of the biopharma industry in Iran. In addition, the present paper shows that intermediary institutions played three important roles in the emergence of this industry in Iran: 1) Creating a state – academic society embeddedness; 2) Building community among institutional entrepreneurs; 3) Facilitating the financing processes and establishing international networks.