By taking conventionalist view of the evolution of biotechnology, we suggest that the process by which entrepreneurs determined what made biotechnology valuable and figured out how to organize around such an economic logic was contested. The shape that biotechnology has ultimately taken emerged...

In her research studies, Woodward (1958) found that those firms that were organized according to the logic of their production technologies were more successful (on a set of economic measures) than those that did not. On the conceptual front, this acknowledgment of contingency in organizational...