Designing Dolly: interactions between economics, technology and science and the evolution of hybrid institutions

This paper analyses the economic dimensions and implications of the processes that led to the cloning of Dolly, the sheep. It is shown that economic processes interacted intimately with technological and scientific processes in the designing of Dolly. Two contributions are made. The first provides a detailed example of the ways in which economic, technological, and scientific processes interact, thus contributing to the view that sees technology and science, not as exogenous forces driving economic change, but as endogenous processes in that change. The second contribution involves an analysis of the institutions within which the economic, technological and scientific processes were embedded. Attention is drawn specifically to the 'hybrid firm' that has emerged in science-based industries, embedded in the institutions of government research institutes and universities. The challenge posed to economists and social scientists is to enrich their theories of the firm in order to better capture the complexities of the hybrid firm and the institutions in which it is embedded. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.