The Strategic Contributions of Indian Operations in AMRI’s Global Outsourcing Organization

The concept of outsourcing, though late in adoption by pharma¬ceutical research and development organizations relative to other industries, has gained strong acceptance over the past 15 years, and Contract Research Organizations (CROs) have been established to meet most of the needs of the research industry. Furthermore, with¬in the past decade, factors pointed to by Thomas Friedman in his ‘flattening’ of the earth thesis, coupled with the return to India and China of highly educated and trained industrial scientists, and the institution of stronger controls on the treatment of intellectual prop¬erty in these countries have led to the creation and rapid growth of a competitive sector of low cost, contract services organizations that have experienced rapid acceptance and today successfully compete with Western-based CROs.