The probability of success from discovery and pre-clinical initiation of a candidate compound to launch is approximately 0.1 %, the cost of development to launch one product is in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and R&D requires more than ten years. The research and development (R&D) of a pharmaceutical product is time-consuming from the start of research to obtaining approval, and the probability of success with a candidate compound is extremely low. Our results suggest a strong connection between open innovation in the pharmaceutical industry and firms’ economic activities in the supply chain. We then study the multilayer network’s knowledge flow, conduct a statistical test, and verify the significance of the overlapping links between the drug pipeline and supply chain layers. The communities in each layer are characterized by country, category of the company, and bow tie component. The obtained bow-tie structure shows the large strongly connected component and suggests that the knowledge flow in drug pipelines has similar characteristics as the supply chain network. First, we identify the bow-tie structure and the community structure of each network layer.

We analyze the multilayer network constructed with the drug pipeline layer, global supply chain layer, and global ownership layer.

We aim to understand the characteristics of the flow and localization of knowledge during drug development in the global pharmaceutical industry. Drug development is a time-consuming process from the start of research to obtaining approval, and the probability of success with a candidate compound is extremely low.

Global pharmaceutical