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Star Scientists and Institutional Transformation: Patterns of Invention and Innovation in the Formation of the U.S. Biotechnology Industry
Abstract
The most productive ("star") bioscientists had intellectual human capital of extraordinary scientific and pecuniary value for some 10-15 years after Cohen and Boyer's 1973 founding discovery for biotechnology [Cohen, S., Chang, A., Boyer, H. & Helling, R. (1973) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 70, 3240-3244]. This extraordinary value was due to the union of still scarce knowledge of the new research techniques and genius and vision to apply them in novel, valuable ways. As in other sciences, star bioscientists were very protective of their techniques, ideas, and discoveries in the early years of the revolution, tending to collaborate more within their own institution, which slowed diffusion to other scientists. Close, bench-level working ties between stars and firm scientists were needed to accomplish commercialization of the breakthroughs. Where and when star scientists were actively producing publications is a key predictor of where and when commercial firms began to use biotechnology. The extent of collaboration by a firm's scientists with stars is a powerful predictor of its success: for an average firm, 5 articles coauthored by an academic star and the firm's scientists result in about 5 more products in development, 3.5 more products on the market, and 860 more employees. Articles by stars collaborating with or employed by firms have significantly higher rates of citation than other articles by the same or other stars. The U.S. scientific and economic infrastructure has been particularly effective in fostering and commercializing the bioscientific revolution. These results let us see the process by which scientific breakthroughs become economic growth and consider implications for policy.
... While diVerent streams of theorizing fed in to each of the approaches, much of the empirical work done under the umbrella of the various approaches often overlapped by emphasizing concepts, and related measures, that appear in most institutional formulations. Good roadmaps can be found in reviews of institutional theory, most of which also evaluate the research and deWne new pathways for exploration (Meyer, 2002;Zucker, 1987). ...
... In our thinking, these two approaches are not diVerent pillars, but rather diVerent stages of the same underlying social construction of institutions. Please also refer to W. Richard Scott in Chapter 22 of this book who provides a very insightful review of institutional theory that arose at Stanford during the time I was writing my dissertation, working primarily with my dissertation chair, Morris Zelditch, Jr., and John Meyer (see Zucker, 1977Zucker, , 1974. ...
... Focus on action/process, however, also means that the person and the group or organization that he/she mobilizes is central to the theory. The deWning role of one or a few actors is central, and the natural excludability that is inherent in tacit knowledge provides a basis for supernormal returns, competition, and diVerentiation, and success (Michael R. Darby developed the concept of natural excludability; see Zucker andDarby, 1996, andespecially Darby andZucker, 2003 to tracing the eVects of natural excludability has focused primarily on discovering scientists/inventors, their organizational and institutional context, including founding of new companies, and their role in transmission of tacit knowledge about discoveries that increase success of those companies in biotechnology and nanotechnology (Zucker, Darby, and Brewer, 1998;Zucker, 2005a, 2005b;Armstrong, 1998, 2002). 1 Professionals as the holders of knowledge is also a central theme in several other approaches, though these approaches generally leave aside the questions of any returns to that knowledge. Professionals have recently been identiWed as among the more important deWners and diVusers of new ''cultural'' information in the form of at least fads and fashions, providing an organizing and legitimating vision applied recently to innovation in information technology (Greenwood, Suddaby, and Hinings, 2002;DiMaggio, 1991). ...
the process of theory development.
Theory provides the base for knowledge and understanding of important relationships in various disciplines. Theory development is highly important in the
discipline of management and organizations as it is a relatively young Weld of
study, in comparison to many other social science disciplines. As a young Weld
of study, new theory provides important and unique insights that can advance the
Weld’s understanding of management phenomena. In fact, much of the theory used
in management and organizational research has been derived from the social
science disciplines of economics, psychology, and sociology; although new distinctive management theory has been developed, these theories are still in a
developmental stage. Many of the most prominent theories used in the Weld of
management and organizations are examined in this handbook
... Academic research is typically disseminated through publications in academic journals and presentations at scientific meetings as well as by educating students for the workforce with knowledge and know-how arising from scholarly activities, through academic-industry partnerships, or through formal and informal collaborations or consulting with industry [20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28]. Alternatively, inventions and patents arising from federally funded research can be licensed to industry for commercialization through the provisions of the "Patent and Trademark Law Amendments Act" of 1980, known as the Bayh-Dole Act [23,[29][30][31]. ...
... Conversely, there is also evidence that biotechnology companies may derive substantial benefits from licensing academic technologies that extend beyond the technology itself. Studies suggest that a biotechnology firm's relationship with "star" scientists and institutions provide scientific capital in the form of academic networks [26,[79][80][81] and a workforce of university graduates [82][83][84][85][86][87]. These companies have been shown to bring more products to market, create more jobs, and achieve a higher market capitalization [81,88,89]. ...
Licenses of drug-related biotechnologies from academic institutions to commercial firms are intended to promote practical applications of public sector research and a return on government investments in biomedical science. This empirical study compares the economic terms of 239 biotechnology licenses from academic institutions to biotechnology companies with 916 comparable licenses between commercial firms. Academic licenses had lower effective royalty rates (median 3% versus 8%, p<0.001), deal size (median $0.9M versus $31.0M, p<0.001), and precommercial payments (median $1.1M versus $25.4M, p<0.001) than corporate licenses. Controlling for the clinical phase of the most advanced product included in the license reduced the median difference in effective royalty rate between academic and corporate licenses from 5% (95% CI 4.3-5.7) to 3% (95% C.I. 2.4-3.6) but did not change the difference in deal size or precommercial payments. Excluding licenses for co-commercialization did not change the effective royalty rate but reduced the median difference in deal size from $15.8M (95% CI 14.9-16.6) to $11.4M (95% CI 10.4-12.3) and precommercial payments from $9.0M (95% CI 8.0-10.0) to $7.6M (95% CI 6.8-8.4). Controlling for deal terms including exclusivity, equity, or R&D in multivariable regression had no substantive effect on the difference in economic terms. This analysis suggests the economic returns associated with biotechnology licenses from academic institutions are systematically lower than licenses between commercial firms and that this difference is only partially accounted for by differences in the intrinsic terms of the license agreements. These results are discussed in the context of a reasonable royalty rate, recognizing that factors extrinsic to the license agreement may reasonably impact the negotiated value of the license, as well as economic theories that view government as an early investor in innovation and technology licenses as a mechanism for achieving a return on investment.
... There is a long-standing interest in the innovation literature to better understand the link between scientific research and technological development in order to justify the large public investments in scientific research (Cockburn and Henderson, 2001;Calderini et al., 2007;Baycan & Stough, 2013), to explain private sector investments in scientific research (Arora et al., 2018(Arora et al., , 2021Rosenberg, 1990) and to understand the drivers of technological advancement and economic growth (Pavitt, 1991;Zucker & Darby, 1996;Jones, 1995;Griliches, 1986). At the firm level, past research has devoted a great deal of attention to the relationship between science and firms' technological performance measured through patents, showing a positive relation for scientifically active firms and companies collaborating with academia (e.g. ...
... The proximity of the researchers in whom the scientific knowledge is embedded (Zucker & Darby, 1996) and the possibility for them to interact directly with developers and decision makers (Nonaka, 1994;von Hippel, 1994) facilitates the exchange of knowledge (Klueter et al., 2017;Thursby & Thursby, 2011). It also fosters researchers' and developers' understanding of each other's challenges and the development of a common culture with shared objectives and beliefs (Arrow, 1975). ...
Pharmaceutical firms are extremely selective in deciding which patented drug candidates are taken up into clinical development, given the high costs and risks involved. We argue that the scientific base of drug candidates, and who was responsible for that scientific research, are key antecedents of take-up into clinical trials and whether the patent owner (‘internal take-up’) or another firm (‘external take-up’) leads the clinical development effort. We hypothesize that patented drug candidates that refer to scientific research are more likely to be taken up in development, and that in-house conducted scientific research is predominantly associated with internal take-up due to the ease of knowledge transfer within the firm. Examining 18,360 drug candidates patented by 136 pharmaceutical firms we find support for these hypotheses. In addition, drug candidates referring to in-house scientific research exhibit a higher probability of eventual drug development success. Our findings underline the importance of a ‘rational drug design’ approach that explicitly builds on scientific research. The benefits of internal scientific research in clinical development highlight the potential downside of pervasive organizational specialization in the life sciences in either scientific research or clinical development.
... The challenge for inventors is to identify, select, and exploit useful science, in particular, recent science that offers a first-mover advantage. This is a costly process: recent discoveries at the frontier of knowledge are early stage, and often not fully codified, rendering knowledge sticky (Polanyi, 1958;von Hippel, 1994) or "naturally excludable" (Zucker and Darby, 1996;Boudreau et al., 2016). Studies have claimed and tested the existence of geographically mediated spillovers in which proximity helps overcome excludability problems and provides local inventors with direct access to university and public discoveries (Acs et al., 1991;Jaffe et al., 1993;Feldman, 1994;Audretsch and Feldman, 1996;Anselin et al., 1997;Belenzon and Schankerman, 2013;Liu, 2015). ...
... Local institutions, organizations, and universities contribute to geographically bounded social capital by creating committees, conferences, seminars, and entrepreneurial events that gather both scientific and technology experts. Among the participants, a limited number of individual researchers, who possess a high level of expertise in their domain, play a significant role within a scientific community (Zucker and Darby, 1996) and constitute a driving force in developing relationships between scientists and industrial inventors (Bercovitz and Feldman, 2008;Aschohoff and Grimpe, 2014;Tartari et al., 2020). Recurring interactions between scientific and technology experts create loosely formalized networks that serve as bridges among communities, encouraging learning, collaborations, and synergies (Dasgupta and David, 1994;Feldman and Florida, 1994;Gittelman and Kogut, 2003;D'este and Perkman, 2011;Laursen et al., 2012). ...
Inventors located in a vibrant scientific community enjoy faster access to relevant publications. The key role of the local scientific community is to provide access to global knowledge and not necessarily to feed the colocated inventors with direct inputs. We develop the logic for these effects and provide empirical tests using dyads of publication and patent data. We develop a model that links scientific knowledge, codified through publication, to industry’s inventive activity. Our analysis includes three key steps. First, we characterize the knowledge profile of local expertise for French NUTS3 jurisdictions. Second, we match scientific publications to industrial patents to consider the specific scientific knowledge useful to industrial invention. Finally, we examine the extent to which the presence of a local related scientific knowledge base provides utility for local inventions. Specifically, we consider the ability of local inventions to more rapidly avail themselves of scientific knowledge when located in a munificent location. We find that location reduces the timing to access to relevant worldwide publications by almost 1 year. Thus, colocation with scientific experts provides inventors a timing advantage by allowing earlier exploitation of recent global scientific discoveries.
... Although significant, informal interactions, such as conferences and expositions, are not considered activities of UBC but precursors of cooperation (Geuna and Rossi, 2011). Existing studies on the UBC subject have been mostly restricted to only one aspect (Lee, 1996;Zucker and Darby, 1996). Although activities such as R&D or technology transformation are well known to the public, they still cannot represent the overall picture of UBC activities. ...
... Although activities such as R&D or technology transformation are well known to the public, they still cannot represent the overall picture of UBC activities. Moreover, UBC activities are interrelated and interactive (Zucker and Darby, 1996). Focusing only on one aspect of activities, irrespective of the aspect, is not enough for understanding UBC. ...
As an independent research field, there is growing attention to university–business cooperation (UBC). However, few studies focus on the driving factors of UBC, which remains an open problem in this area. This study analyzes a broad mix of drivers underlying seven UBC activities, namely, curriculum development and design (CDD), student mobility (SD), lifelong learning (LLL), professional mobility (PM), research and development (R&D), commercialization (COM), and entrepreneurship (ENT), and discusses the internal mechanism and external environment of higher education institutions (HEIs) as the moderator variable affecting UBC activities and individual motivations. Specifically, based on the social cognition theory, the independent variables include motivations (money, career, research, education, and social), the internal mechanism (support mechanism, strategic mechanism, and management mechanism), and the external environment (policy environment, economic environment, and cultural environment) are designed. The aforementioned seven UBC activities are taken as dependent variables. This work takes university faculty as the research object. Through empirical analysis, it demonstrates that the combination of driving factors of different UBC activities has its particularity. Furthermore, the results showed that the internal mechanism and external environment of HEIs could positively moderate the relationship between individual motivations and UBC activities. In terms of theoretical contribution, this study reveals the combination of factors that drive university faculty to engage in UBC. On the other hand, it can provide a reference for policymakers and managers to better development of UBC.
... Chen et al., 2021). In other words, transforming, applying, and disseminating these scienti c and technological achievements requires the combined efforts of local economic development levels and enterprise strengths (Mowery & Sampat, 1980;Zucker & Darby, 1996). Existing research has explored the external support from the government and enterprises, mainly examining the impact of policy support on the transformation of scienti c achievements, especially the cooperation between government policies and schools and enterprises (Mowery & Sampat, 1980). ...
Economic, policy, and resource factors within the regional integration of the Yangtze River Delta are crucial pathways for promoting the transformation of scientific and technological achievements in higher education. This study examines the multifactorial synergistic effects behind the differences in scientific and technological achievements transformation in the Yangtze River Delta from the space-time dimension, offering important insights for practical applications. Drawing on interface theory, this study constructs an analytical framework of economic integration-policy integration-innovation resource integration and employs dynamic QCA to analyze provincial panel data from 2013 to 2022. The study explores the configurational effects of economic integration, policy integration, and innovation resource integration on the transformation levels of scientific and technological achievements in the Yangtze River Delta. By combining between-group and within-group analyses, the study investigates the spatial distribution differences in provincial coverage. The findings reveal that no univariate factor is necessary for high levels of scientific and technological achievement transformation. Three distinct pathways were identified in this study, which are the regional economic development-innovation resource integration model, economic integration-research collaboration model, and regional economic development-innovation resource integration model. In the temporal dimension, apart from a collective decline in pathway consistency in 2016 due to economic structural adjustments and reforms in research and development (R&D) funding management, there were fluctuations in consistency from 2019 to 2022, likely driven by COVID-19. In the spatial dimension, two configurations showed significant regional differences in provincial coverage distribution.
... On the other hand, enterprise exploratory innovation requires the guidance of star scientists, many of whom are part of the Senior Leadership Team (SLT), to establish a new R&D department that aligns with the future core competitiveness of the enterprise. Through socialization and induced learning, these prominent scientists utilize their authoritative knowledge and experience to drive more valuable innovation and broader product development through collaboration (Zucker & Darby, 1996;Jain, 2006). Campbell, Saxton, and Banerjee (2014) argue that relocation can optimize knowledge inertia following the establishment of new departments. ...
Following up on digital government construction, will enterprises passively shape the inertia of invention knowledge, and will it affect their exploratory innovation? We explored the impact of digital government construction (DGC) on firms’ exploratory innovation (Exploratory) using data from China’s1528 A-share firms over a decade. We find that DGC significantly promotes Exploratory. Firms are compelled to cultivate invention knowledge inertia (KI) in response to DGC to promote Exploratory. The knowledge openness of the senior leadership team (KOM) moderates the link between KI and Exploratory. Notably, the diversified knowledge of executives with financial backgrounds weakens the DGC→KI, and the effect is obvious in state-owned and high-tech enterprises. While knowledge without such backgrounds strengthens the KI→Exploratory.
This study provides valuable insights into government-enterprise cooperation, emphasizing the role of innovation knowledge inertia in that.
... In the industrial sector, companies advance their technological development and innovative capacity through "learning by hiring" strategies (Lin & Bozeman, 2006;Kaiser et al., 2018;Cassiman et al., 2018). In academia, the integration of scientists with industry experience enhances the institution's reputation, enriches teaching methods, and fosters varied collaborative opportunities (Fernández-Zubieta et al., 2016;Zucker & Darby, 1996). However, career mobility can also disrupt scientists' research agendas and restrict their connections with former collaborators, as a result of professional and personal dislocation (Azoulay et al., 2017;Tartari et al., 2020), particularly when a scientist moves from university to corporate or vice versa. ...
The movement of distinguished computer scientists, including ACM Fellows, serves as a pivotal mechanism for disseminating knowledge. This mobility facilitates significant knowledge spillovers that extend across various institutions, sectors, and even national borders. However, we know little about the mobility patterns of ACM fellows and how mobility affects their subsequent scientific careers. In this study, by tracing the mobility trajectories of nearly all ACM fellows elected between 1994 and 2022, and further employing a difference-in-differences design, we are then able to understand the evolving dynamics of the mobility networks among ACM Fellows and quantify the effects of different mobility paths on scientists’ productivity, collaborations, and citation impact. We find that institutional mobility among ACM fellows has seen a rapid increase since the 1970s, particularly in terms of inter-sectoral job transitions between elite universities and big tech corporations. Furthermore, different career mobility paths shape ACM fellows’ post-mobility scientific careers. Mobility paths to academia tend to bolster research collaboration and productivity, whereas leaving academia to industry decreases scientists’ collaborations and productivity yet rebounded following a move from industry to academia. Together, these results imply the changing structure of ACM fellows’ mobility networks over time and underscore the profound implications of mobility paths on their subsequent scientific careers.
... First, the regional concentration of research universities and their institutionalized link with private firms plays an anchor role for the emergence of the high-tech clusters. University scientists' chart and predict development trajectories in scientific knowledge, facilitate transfer of knowledge and signal quality, found startup (by themselves) to exploit novel scientific findings whose (e)valuation may not have been fair (Higgins and Gulati, 2003;Stuart and Ding, 2006;Audretsch and Lehmann, 2005;2006;Zucker and Darby, 1996;2014). Oftentimes, they also render the interface between organizations more permeable, driving knowledge spillover processes by upholding the norms of open science (Padgett and Sandholtz and Powell, 2012;Vallas and Kleinman, 2008;Colyvas and Powell, 2006). ...
This research will compare the emergence of regional knowledge economy clusters in New York City and the Malmo-Lund. It will investigate similarities and differences in micro-level, bottom-up collective entrepreneurial norms, and institutions in the two regions. The second largest regional tech economies in each of its own countries, they share similar periodic trends of emergence and growth trajectories. Using mixed-methods, the research examines the entrepreneurs’ social background (educational, occupational, and sectoral), cooperative and normative interactions, and uses of regional business institutions and intermediary organizations. After identifying the discernible cross-regional similarities and differences, the research connects them to the insights of comparative innovation and entrepreneurship literature to examine whether, how much, and why these patterns reflect (or not) to what comparative capitalism literature would predict.
... As scientific elite, we understand the successful researchers who sit in review panels and advisory boards of agencies and companies and eventually achieve high managerial positions in university or science policy-with a high concentration of privilege and influence. For example, in biomedicine, 'star scientists' are highly-successful and highlyprestigious researchers with large grants, industrial contracts, patents, and/or spin-offs (Zucker and Darby 1996). We propose that the participation of the same scientific elite in the various decision-making processes keep research priorities stable. ...
A current issue in mission-oriented research policy is the balance of priorities in research portfolios. In parallel, in health policies, there is a debate on shifting research away from biomedical treatments towards health promotion and well-being. In this study, we examine if research agendas are responsive to these demands in cardiometabolic and mental health. First, we conducted bibliometric analyses which showed that most research remains focused on biomedical and clinical approaches. In contrast, focus groups and interviews suggested that more research is needed upstream, i.e. on broader determinants of health, public health, and health systems. Most experts also saw a need for more intervention-oriented research. Furthermore, comparisons between cardiometabolic and mental health suggested that they require similar upstream knowledge in issues such as health systems, nutrition, labour, or economic conditions. We discuss the reasons for the persistence of current priorities and the implications in the context of funding strategies.
... Academic research is traditionally disseminated through publication, presentation, or training students for the workforce with knowledge and know-how arising from scholarly activities. Research is also communicated directly to industry through academicindustry partnerships or consulting [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22]. In addition, patents arising from federally funded research may be licensed to industry for commercialization through the provisions of the "Patent and Trademark Law Amendments Act" of 1980, known as the Bayh-Dole Act [23][24][25][26]. ...
Previous studies have shown that National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding contributed >$187 billion for basic or applied research related to the 356 drugs approved 2010-2019. This analysis asks how much of this funding led to patents cited as providing market exclusivity, patents that would be subject to the provisions of the Bayh-Dole Act that promote and protect the public interest. The method involves identifying published research in PubMed related to the approved drugs (applied research) or their targets (basic research). NIH-funded projects (grants) funding these publications and patents arising from these projects were both identified in RePORT. Patents cited as providing market exclusivity were identified in DrugPatentWatch (which incorporates FDA Orange Book). NIH funded basic or applied research related to all 313 FDA-approved drugs 2010-2019 with at least one patent in DrugPatentWatch. This research comprised 350 thousand publications (9% applied research; 91% basic research) supported by 341 thousand fiscal years (project years) of NIH funding and $164 billion in NIH project year costs (17% applied research; 83% basic research). These NIH projects also produced 22,360 patents, 119 of which were cited in DrugPatentWatch as protecting 34/313 drugs. These patents were associated with 769 project years of NIH funding (0.23% total) and project year costs of $0.95 billion (0.59% total). Overall, only 1.5% of total NIH funding for applied research and 0.38% of total NIH funding for basic research was associated with patents in DrugPatentWatch. This analysis shows that very little of the NIH funding for research that contributes to new drug approvals leads to patents that provide market exclusivity and are subject to the provisions of the Bayh-Dole Act that promote the public interest in practical applications of the research, reasonable use and pricing, and a return on this public sector investment. This suggests that the Bayh-Dole Act is limited in its ability to protect the public interest in the pharmaceutical innovations driven by NIH-funded research.
... It also highlights that they increase their productivity after patenting. Furthermore, studies show that most researchers, especially in biotechnology, appear to have outstanding research records after their involvement in patenting (Zucker and Darby, 1996;Agostini et al., 2015). This is also confirmed by studies in Azoulay et al. (2009), where they found the number of patents owned by scientists positively related to subsequent publication rates demonstrating the importance of patent information. ...
Patent protection typically lasts about 20 years from the filing date and is in exchange for sufficiently disclosing the invention. The disclosure aims to enrich technical knowledge globally, promote creativity and technological innovation and contribute to sustainable socio-economic development. After this protection period, the patent expires, and in principle, any person may begin practicing the specific subject matter previously protected by the patent. Since the invention originally met all the patentability requirements, it was disclosed sufficiently to stimulate further innovation by others through a thorough understanding of existing developments in the patent literature. Thus, in addition to scholarly research articles, this makes patents potentially valuable sources of technical information in research and academia, unlocking new technology opportunities. We use the exploratory research method to study a potentially genuine and vital research stream that uncovers the overlooked yet valuable scientific and technical information sources that higher education institutions could utilize to complement academic research articles. This work establishes a necessary research agenda that critically challenges researchers to tap into the immediately available and promising technology opportunities presented by patents in the public domain. Using case studies to gain in-depth, multi-faceted explorations about the impact of these patents, we find that technologies contained in expired patents, abandoned patents, and technologies not protected by IPRs, resulting in improved research quality and increased collaboration with industry, if adequately exploited and integrated with other technologies. Moreover, this could lead to increased academic patenting and commercialization with support from the university's Technology Transfer Office.
... More specifically, even though organizational learning is led and directed by key organization members, there is a dearth of information about how organizational actors facilitate learning from significant organizational setbacks. Prolific inventors, for example, identified as "individuals who have demonstrated disproportionately high levels of performance and superior visibility in the external market" (Kehoe & Tzabbar, 2015, p.711), are regarded as the locus of knowledge creation and the conduit of learning (Grant, 1996;March, 1991;Zucker & Darby, 1996). These inventors command power and social status within and outside the firm based on their exceptional performance and unique expertise (Lahiri, Pahnke, Howard, & Boeker, 2019;Zucker, Darby, & Armstrong, 1998). ...
Research summary Through a longitudinal study of the product development portfolios of 457 US-based firms in the biotechnology industry, we investigate how prolific inventors shape a firm's innovative direction following product development failure. Contrary to received wisdom, we argue and demonstrate that an increase in the number of prolific inventors is associated with a decrease in firm propensity to pursue novel product innovation following such failure. We further find that the presence of prolific inventors with greater collaborative strength and longer tenure negatively moderate the positive relationship between failure and the pursuit of novel product development. We discuss the implications of our results for existing research on learning from failure and strategic human capital. Managerial summary In case of adverse events such as product development failure, managers often rely on the firm's prolific inventors to help the firm learn from failure. Our study shows that there are limits to this approach. While prolific inventors increase firm propensity for novel product development, such propensity is significantly decreased following product failure. We further establish that the presence of prolific inventors with greater collaborative strength and long tenures is especially likely to reduce firms' pursuit of novel products, while the presence of those with low collaborative strength and tenure tend to increase this propensity.
... Even further, studies now consider commercial work by academics to be drivers of important advances in science (Fini et al., 2021). Although seeing a university as a place of fundamental entrepreneurship is not new and can be traced back to the 1990s (Clark, 1998;Zucker & Darby, 1996), seeing entrepreneurship as the role that the university should play in an emerging entrepreneurship society has only been considered since the 2010s (Audretsch, 2014). It is not uncommon now to see universities creating incubator programs, fostering academic commercialization, and even using a triple helix model for their incubator operations (Nerva Blumho, 2021). ...
Technology commercialization is now one of the cornerstones of the experience in the academic environment. Universities and colleges are now highly dedicated to understanding and giving priority not only to creating new technologies but also to commercializing them. This chapter describes some of the experiences and empirical evidence that we received as we were building the Runway Startup Postdoc Program at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech. It explains three broad steps of technology transfer experimentations and flips the traditional technology and transfer office (TTO) model. Experimenting should be a natural component of incubator programs and the most effective way of producing meaningful change in technology transfer systems. Our recommendation to academic incubators and TTOs is to embrace experimentation and build a technology transfer culture that is less concerned about the traditional output metrics (i.e., patents, licenses, revenue) and is more geared toward providing people with the resources, connections, and knowledge they require to create a start-up.
... Secondly, star scientists are also assumed to play a specific role. Zucker and Darby (1996) have stressed their leadership as a source of intellectual capital. They show too that the externalities generated by these scientists tend to be geographically bounded. ...
The thesis aims at clarifying the relationship between innovation, location and employment growth. A first part provides a general overview of the literature and introduces our four following essays. A second part examine the link between innovation activity and firms’ location, while a third one focus on employment growth by area without however taking into account innovation activity. A fourth part combines the main three elements, i.e. innovation, firms’ location and employment growth. A final chapter summarizes the main contributions of the thesis and extend it by examining the specific role played by employers not covered by the Community Innovation Survey and the potential skills complementarity between workers operating in neighbouring areas.
... Balven et al. (2018) suggested going even deeper than organizational factors making or breaking academic entrepreneurship and technology transfer, and shifting attention to its key protagonists: faculty members with their cognition, motivation, and behavior. Zucker and Darby (1996) were among the first to study the micro-micro level in detail by investigating star scientists, who were extraordinarily productive and played a key role in forming new industries and transforming existing ones. These excellent scientists were a link between universities and firms by moving back and forth from university to firm or collaborating at the bench-science level with fellow scientists at firms. ...
Academic intrapreneurship refers to the individual behaviours of scientists who depart from their customary research and education initiatives and become involved in knowledge commercialization without leaving academia. This paper aims to examine how academic intrapreneurs perceive and respond to organizational factors set by departments, faculties, schools, and university boards that influence knowledge transfer, the initiation of an internal project, and the collaboration with societal stakeholders. We employ an embedded case study approach to examine the role of perceived control and influence within the internal work environment of a knowledge commercialization process within the DiabetesStation, a healthcare innovation at the Erasmus Medical Center (MC), a university hospital in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. We used a semi-structured interview strategy and analyzed 12 individual respondent interviews. The results show that the relationship between academics and the Knowledge Commercialization Process within the DS at Erasmus MC was influenced by six factors (i.e., external collaboration, product quality, time availability, external financing, internal financing, and rewards and reinforcement). Our study highlights that the perception of- the academic intrapreneur’s control and influence seems to impact effectively transferring academic knowledge from academic institutions to the private sector for economic and societal benefit. The research results highlight three controllable areas of an academic institution’s internal work environment that can enhance the relationship between knowledge valorization and academic intrapreneurship—time availability, rewards and reinforcement, and internal financing.
... The importance of top scientists for innovation is well established. Firms with top scientists enjoy faster technological progress and higher economic rents (Zucker and Darby 1996). Retaining top scientists is essential for a merger to succeed and to achieve its goals (Bower 2001, Pautler 2003. ...
P ast research has primarily focused on what happens after a merger. This research attempts to determine whether anticipated benefits from the merger actually accrue. We characterize the effects of observed variables on whether pairs of firms merge, vis-à-vis roommate matching, and then link these factors to post-merger innovation (i.e., number of patents). We jointly estimate the two models using Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods with a unique panel data set of 1,979 mergers between 4,444 firms across industries and countries from 1992 to 2008. We find that similarity in national culture and technical knowledge has a positive effect on partner selection and post-merger innovation. Anticipated synergy from subindustry similarity, however, is not realized in post-merger innovation. Furthermore, some key synergy sources are unanticipated when selecting a merger partner. For example, financial synergy from higher total assets and complementarity in total assets and debt leverage as well as knowledge synergy from breadth and depth of knowledge positively influence innovation but not partner selection. Furthermore, factors that dilute synergy (e.g., higher debt levels) are unanticipated, and firms merge with firms that detract from their innovation potential. Overall, the results reveal some incongruity between anticipated and realized synergy. Data, as supplemental material, are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mksc.2016.0978.
... To analyze stratification in individual and departmental productivity we build on another set of studies. Specifically, we investigate gaps between the majority of less productive scientists from 'top-performers' (Kwiek, 2018), variously analyzed in other studies as 'eminent scientists' (Prpić, 1996), 'elite scientists' (Parker et al., 2013) or 'star scientists' (Zucker & Darby, 1996). This distinction is based on a growing understanding that a small group of researchers is responsible for the production of large shares of academic productivity, usually estimated as the top 20% of the scientists publishing 80% of the corpus of publications (Abramo et al., 2009). ...
In 1959 Lord Charles Percy Snow delivered a scathing critique of the bifurcation of scientists into two cultures: The humanists and the natural scientists. Five decades later, Jerome Kagan retorted that the university has actually evolved into three cultures—adding the social sciences as a distinct discipline with its own language, aims, and commitments. In the present study we evaluate one dimension of the ‘three cultures hypothesis,’ by addressing productivity patterns in physics (the natural sciences), history (the humanities) and economics (the social sciences). To do this, we analyze a unique dataset of faculty productivity in 279 American Ph.D. granting universities, utilizing 15 years of data from 6064 physicists, 5508 historians, and 4960 economists. The results support this major facet of the 'three cultures hypothesis’ by showing that productivity norms are truly different across the disciplines. Physicists publish enormous quantities of papers but very few books. Historians, in contrast, gravitate towards book publishing but author few papers. Productivity norms in economics take a middle ground between physics and history. We found those three disciplinary norms to be invariant across individuals and institutes. As academic administrators worldwide embrace ‘new management’ practices, these findings—speaking for the existence of profound disciplinary differences in productivity—are vital for a sober discussion of the future of universities.
Although much attention is accorded to star performers, this paper considers the extent to which stars, themselves, benefit from the contribution of their collaborators (the constellation). By considering stars, constellations, and the synergies between them, we address a key question: To what extent is collaboration performance driven by the great individual or by great constellations? We introduce a novel approach that uses a matching model to uncover the complementarities driving collaboration formation. We use formal value-capture theory to estimate the relative contribution of stars and constellations to joint value creation. Analyzing a sample of academic research collaborations, we document that stars’ relative contribution exceeds that of their constellations in less than 15% of collaborations, although constellations provide a greater relative contribution in 9%. In most collaborations, neither party dominates: Innovation is a collective endeavor driven equally by the star and the constellation. Joint value creation and relative contribution are explained by the subtle interplay between complementarities in joint work and the substitutability of collaborative parties in the market. Joint value creation increases with the strength of complementarities between parties in a match. Relative value creation, and hence dominance, increases with the substitutability of one’s collaborative partner. Interestingly, joint value creation is greatest in collaborations where both stars and constellations offer bundles of rare attributes and where neither the star nor the constellation dominates.
This paper was accepted by Olav Sorenson, organizations.
Funding: D. Mindruta gratefully acknowledges funding from the HEC Foundation and from the French National Research Agency (ANR) “Investissements d’Avenir” (LabEx Ecodec/ANR-11-LABX-0047). J. Bercovitz and M. Feldman gratefully acknowledge funding from the Science of Science Approach to Analyzing and Innovating the Biomedical Research Enterprise (SCISIPBIO) program of the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) [Grant 1934875].
Supplemental Material: The online appendices and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2021.01969 .
Social evaluations proceed in stages. First, judges filter a broad pool of candidates and pick a subset for detailed assessment. Then, the chosen group undergoes a closer examination, during which winners are selected. At both stages of the process, judges are susceptible to bias. Bias is especially commonplace when contenders work in teams because each team member’s merit can be hard to distinguish from that of others. Our paper investigates evaluation bias originating in intrateam status asymmetries. Using the National Basketball Association’s data, we explore how high-status teammates are associated with their colleagues’ chances of winning awards. We find that bias stemming from high-status teammates’ presence is beneficial to their colleagues in the first stage of evaluations because high-status actors increase their team members ‘visibility to judges. However, our results also show that in the second stage of evaluations, the presence of high-status teammates could decrease their colleagues’ chances of winning awards because lower-status actors might seem less worthy of awards when evaluated alongside high-status individuals.
Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2020.13917 .
More than ever, universities and policymakers are paying attention to faculty members' engagement in industries' projects because university-industry collaboration (UIC) is seen as the key to economic development. However, the UIC differs from country to country , and researchers may have different motivations. This study explored the relationship between university researchers' motivations and varied UIC channels. A questionnaire was administered to the relevant faculty in public universities in two cross-border regions of Portugal and Spain. Drawing on data gathered from 841 researchers, the results reveal differences in these academics' motivations to engage in different channels. Pecuniary motivations (i.e., access to funding and commercialization) drive UIC through joint and contract research, while non-pecuniary motivations (i.e., learning opportunities and access to resources) inhibit cooperation through the same two engagement channels. In addition, joint and contract research involvement also depends on researchers' age, academic status, department size, and field of study. This study provides empirical evidence on the motivations and channels of UIC in two cross-border regions of Portugal and Spain. Furthermore, it presents important results for universities and policymakers who need to increase motivation and improve UIC channels.
Purpose
This study aims to develop a model of learning-by-hiring in which knowledge gains may occur at the time of recruitment but also after recruitment when other incumbent organizational members assimilate a recruit’s knowledge. The author’s model predicts that experienced recruits are more likely to catalyze change to their organization’s core technological capabilities.
Design/methodology/approach
The continuous-time parametric hazard rate regressions predict core technological change in a long panel (1970–2017) of US biotechnology industry patent data. The author uses over 140,000 patents to model the evolution of knowledge of over 52,000 scientists and over 4,450 firms. To address endogeneity concerns, the author uses the Heckman selection method and does robustness tests using a difference-in-difference analysis.
Findings
The author finds that a hire’s prior research and development (R&D) experience helps overcome inertia arising from her or his new-to-an-organization “distant” knowledge to increase the likelihood of core technological change. In addition, while the author finds that incumbent organizational members resist technological change, experienced hires may effectively induce them to adopt new ways of doing things. This is particularly the case when hires collaborate with incumbents in R&D projects. Understanding the effects of hiring on core technological change, therefore, benefits from an assessment of hire R&D experience and its effects on incumbent inertia in an organization.
Practical implications
First, the author does not recommend managers to hire scientists with considerable distant knowledge only as this may be detrimental to core technological change. Second, the author recommends organizations striving to effectuate technological change to hire people with considerable prior R&D experience as this confers them with the ability to influence other members and socialize incumbent members. Third, the author recommends that managers hire people with both significant levels of prior experience and distant knowledge as they are complements. Finally, the author recommends managers to encourage collaboration between highly experienced hired scientists and long-tenured incumbent organizational members to facilitate incumbent learning, socialization and adoption of new ways of doing things.
Originality/value
This study develops a model of learning-by-hiring, which, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, is the first to propose, test and advance KM literature by showing the effectiveness of experienced hires to stimulate knowledge diffusion and core technological change over time after being hired. This study contributes to innovation, organizational learning and strategy literatures.
Abstract: The purpose of this study was to examine the status of Higher Education
Institutions Research and University Industry linkage in the Northern Cluster Universities in
the case of Mekelle and Samara Universities Engineering and Technology College. The study
is guided by a conceptual frame work derive from the review of the literature on
organizational characteristics and environmental factors that influence university – industry
linkage. Moreover, a mixed method approach was used to collect and analyze data for this
study. Data were collected from 100 instructors of the institutions through questioner,
interview and document mining. Findings of data analysis indicated that: the status of
industry –university research linkage is an infant stage. The factors which hinder the linkage
between industry and universities research of Higher Education Institutions are Lack of
sufficient research fund in industry, Lack of enough encouragement for researchers to
undertake more applicable research , the capacity of industries to absorb and apply
graduate research results is weak, Lack of mutual trust between universities and industry,
Insufficient publicity, weak exchange of researchers between industry and universities, Weak
dissemination of research out puts, luck of fiscal incentives for joint research and
development with universities, Lack of sufficient research fund in universities, Poor
orientation of the industry sector on research and development, and Inefficient bureaucracy.
Whereas, The enabling factors are national policy frame work to stimulate universities
industry linkage, the Quality of academic research (research skill of academic staff) and
interest of industrialist and academicians, weak implementation of policy frame that foster
the link with academic research and industry in North Cluster Universities in the case of Mekelle and Samara University Engineering and Technology College. Finally,
recommendations for improving the current practices are suggested based on the findings.
Using data from an original survey of 409 authors of recent articles in major public administration and policy journals, we investigate the mechanisms whereby academic public administration and policy researchers influence practice and the factors affecting their magnitude of impact through different mechanisms. Through factor analysis, we elucidate four broad “impact channels” through which such researchers influence practice: research uptake, teaching, media engagement, and expert consultation. While researcher motivation to achieve research use by practitioners is significant for most of these channels, demographic characteristics including researcher productivity, rank, career length, gender, and race are less significant. Superior university quality associates positively with achievement of impact through all channels save teaching. Results validate functional grouping of societal impact mechanisms and extend previous findings about associations between motivation, productivity, university quality, and impact of research.
Online platforms such as preprint servers have become an important way to disseminate new scientific knowledge prior to peer review. However, little is known about how attention to preprints may vary across authors from different countries of origin, particularly relative to evaluation in expert-controlled systems such as scientific journals. This study explores how readers allocated attention across preprints in the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic, a time when there was an increase in demand for new research and a corresponding increase in the use of preprint platforms around the world. We find that, after controlling carefully for article quality and topic, as well as the prominence of the preprint’s ultimate publication outlet, preprints with authors from Chinese institutions receive less attention, and preprints with authors from U.S. institutions receive more attention, than preprints with authors from the rest of the world. In an exploration of potential mechanisms driving the observed effects, we find evidence that when evaluation is more constrained, in terms of lack of knowledge or expertise and increase in time pressure, audiences tend to make greater use of preprint authors’ country of origin as a proxy for quality or relevance. The results suggest that geographic biases may persist or even be exacerbated on platforms designed to promote unfettered access to early research findings.
This paper was accepted by Toby Stuart, entrepreneurship and innovation.
Supplemental Material: The data files and online appendix are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.4936 .
Star inventors are the most outstanding innovators in the technology field. Most extant literature defines star inventors along the lines of performance and social relationship. This paper presents a three-dimensional model of star inventors—invention performance, social relationship and technology commercialization as an extension of previous multidimensional conceptualizations of individual differences in inventive capacity. Furthermore, a rank–frequency distribution model combined with the Peak Over Threshold (POT) model based on Extreme Value Theory (EVT) is utilized to determine the threshold for distinguishing stars from non-stars. One case study describes inventors in the graphene sector based on the USPTO database. The findings suggest that 491 star inventors can be identified out of 5777 inventors in the graphene sector; the highest overlap between any two types of star inventors is up to 21%. If the commercialization of inventors is not considered, nearly half of the commercial stars will be ignored. All-stars are the most outstanding in terms of invention performance, social relationship and technology commercialization, but they are also the scarcest.
The current study attempts to map the intellectual structure of Human Resource Accounting to understand the research gaps and future trajectories. The study employs systematic literature review technique to extract relevant literature, bibliometric analysis to map the intellectual structure of research in human resource accounting, to identify underlying research themes and content analysis to identify avenues for future research. Based on 2438 publications, author keyword co-occurrences extracted four themes namely, Human Resource Management, Intellectual Capital, Human Capital, and Voluntary Disclosure. The study also summarizes significant findings of papers under each cluster through content analysis identifying areas for future research. The study provides a bird’s eye view of the intellectual structure of academic research efforts in the field of human resource accounting. The study is one of the first attempt to comprehensively review the academic literature from Scopus database employing systematic literature review, bibliometric methods, and content analysis in the field of human resource accounting.
A number of medical experts have become famous overnight in China since the outbreak of COVID-19. This research investigates four representative Chinese scientists by employing search analytics of the Baidu index (from December 2019 to May 2020) and content analysis of answers and commentaries on the Zhihu website (from January 2020 to May 2020). We find that the four scientists present different images and spark unprecedented publicity. In particular, the key to the transformation from scientists into public intellectuals is to demonstrate moral responsibility in public images, or to realize humorous and effective communication with the public. The birth of celebrity scientists has not only reshaped the public's traditional perception of scientists but also played a crucial role in the governance of pandemic risks by guiding the public's behavior and offering scientific ways to cope with risks.
Through a longitudinal study of the product development portfolios of 457 US‐based firms in the biotechnology industry, we investigate how prolific inventors shape a firm's innovative direction following product development failure. Contrary to received wisdom, we argue and demonstrate that an increase in the number of prolific inventors is associated with a decrease in firm propensity to pursue novel product innovation following such failure. We further find that the presence of prolific inventors with greater collaborative strength and longer tenure negatively moderate the positive relationship between failure and the pursuit of novel product development. We discuss the implications of our results for research on learning from failure and strategic human capital. In case of adverse events such as product development failure, managers often rely on the firm's prolific inventors to help the firm learn from failure. Our study shows that there are limits to this approach. While prolific inventors increase firm propensity for novel product development, such propensity is significantly decreased following product failure. We further establish that the presence of prolific inventors with greater collaborative strength and long tenures is especially likely to reduce firms’ pursuit of novel products, while the presence of those with low collaborative strength and tenure tend to increase this propensity. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
Kooperativer Innovationstransfer zwischen Wissenschaft, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft ist eine wichtige Determinante regionaler Innovations- und Entwicklungskapazitäten. Strategische Partnerschaften zwischen Hochschulen, Unternehmen und Akteuren aus Politik und Verwaltung stellen in diesem Kontext einen ebenso anspruchsvollen wie effektiven Kanal der strategischen Translation angewandter, innovativer Forschungsergebnisse dar. Dieser Beitrag reflektiert den Aufbau einer Science-Industry-Partnership (SIP) im Bereich Medizintechnik, die in den vergangenen Jahren etabliert wurde. Die zentrale Fragestellung lautet, welche Faktoren für den erfolgreichen Aufbau regionaler SIPs wesentlich sind. Zusätzlich gehen wir der Frage nach, welche Rolle SIPs für die sie umgebenden regionalen Innovationssysteme und umgekehrt spielen. Das Fallbeispiel zeigt, dass thematische Schwerpunkte hilfreich sind, um langfristige, vertrauensvolle Kooperationsbeziehungen zu bilden. Der Beitrag zeigt zusätzlich zentrale Meilensteine der SIP-Entwicklung auf, formuliert auf deren Basis Handlungsempfehlungen für die praktische Umsetzung und identifiziert bestehende Forschungslücken.
For decades, scholars and managers alike have shared a sustained interest in harnessing the talents of high-performing employees primarily due to their disproportionate contributions. An emerging research stream has begun examining the diverse effects that high performers elicit on their peers. Prior work now spans multiple organizational fields of study and utilizes a variety of high performer conceptualizations, theoretical lenses, and methodological approaches to examine the main effects of high performers as well as the boundary conditions of these effects. However, the body of work on high performers has yet to be systematically reviewed to synthesize the current state of the high performer literature and build commonality across disciplines. In this multidisciplinary review, we first establish conceptual clarity on what a high performer is (and is not) and identify the conceptualization of high performers used in current research. We then use appraisal theories to create a framework to organize the cognitive, affective, and behavioral peer effects sparked by high performers as well as to build an integrative view of the psychological mechanisms through which peers interpret and react to high performers. Following this, we outline several boundary conditions of high performer peer effects, including the characteristics of high performers, peers, and the context in which high performers and peers interact. We further consider how the various operationalizations of high performers are associated with different peer effects. We conclude by identifying and elaborating several avenues for future research that may yield useful cross-disciplinary insights.
We examine the process by which university technology transfer offices (TTOs) allocate internal resources, which provides insight into technologies offered for commercialization to the private sector. Using detailed administrative records of patenting decisions and outcomes by one prominent U.S. research‐based university's TTO over a 30‐year period, we analyze the performance of invention disclosures by academic stars and by inventors with prior licensing experience. We find that the lead inventor's academic prominence (but not licensing experience) predicts patent application filing, while licensing experience (but not academic prominence) predicts patent impact and commercialization success. We supplement this descriptive analysis with follow‐up interviews and empirical evaluation of possible mechanisms for this seemingly outsized role of academic stars. Increasingly prevalent hybrid organizations are expected to fulfill multiple objectives. University technology transfer offices (TTOs) are an example of a hybrid organization and are charged with disseminating academia‐originated technology for the public good as well as for economic benefit. We study how one TTO allocates internal resources, using comprehensive in‐house administrative data over a 30‐year span. We find that while the TTO tends to put resources behind inventions by academic stars, the commercial returns from licensing inventions from such individuals are no different than inventions by non‐stars. By contrast, inventors' prior licensing experience highly predicts commercial returns. These results illustrate the challenges inherent in internal resource allocation inside a complex hybrid organization.
We examine whether and when star scientist collaborations produce indirect peer effects. We theorize that a star's social status causes a collaboration to act as a prism; it reduces quality uncertainty, leading to increased recognition of coauthors' ideas. We identify two moderators of prisms, other scientists' quality uncertainty and awareness of the collaboration, and link prisms to “sleeping beauties”, articles that are initially overlooked and then rediscovered later. Empirically, we examine the effect on citations of collaborating with a star who either won, or – serving as the control group – who was nominated for but did not win, the Nobel Prize in Physics. We find that articles by the winners' coauthors (and which were published prior to the focal coauthor's first collaboration with the winner) receive a citation boost after the Nobel Prize is awarded, relative to articles by the coauthors of nominees, and that awareness and quality uncertainty moderate this effect. We further find that this difference in citations causes sleeping beauties written by the coauthors of Nobel Prize winners to be rediscovered faster. Our results clarify how star scientists' indirect peer effects impact their coauthors and, through sleeping beauties, how prisms matter for science more broadly.
The supercluster is a new initiative promoted by the Canadian federal government to strengthen Canada’s most promising clusters and allow innovative firms to operate more productively in sourcing inputs and accessing information, knowledge, and technology. This paper contributes to the scientific research on superclusters and pursues two objectives. First, we discuss the origins of the supercluster initiative and trace its roots back to major research traditions on regional agglomerations and territorial innovation models, in particular the cluster theory, the regional innovation system, and the entrepreneurial ecosystem approaches. Second, we conduct a critical analysis and identify four critical questions (or challenges) that need to be addressed to clarify the scope and objectives of the policy.
This paper examines the effect of innovation efficiency on firm performance using the Greek version of the Community Innovation Survey (CIS) 2012–2014 and employs a dataset of 1,274 innovative manufacturing firms. Introducing a data envelopment analysis (DEA)‐type benchmarking strategy with non‐continuous knowledge inputs, the main findings suggest that innovation efficiency, although does not exert a direct impact on firm performance, moderates the relationship between the internally generated knowledge and firm performance. On the other hand, such a moderation relationship is not confirmed for the relationship between external knowledge and innovation spillovers on firm's performance. Although the impact of the embodied to innovation inputs spillovers, on firm performance, is always positive and significant, empirical results indicate that absorptive capacity exhibits diminishing returns with respect to performance.
This paper examines the innovation impact of R&D subsidies in Spain. It contributes to the literature on technology policy by challenging the assumption considering this impact as homogenous across firms. The paper presents a conceptual framework in which the human capital composition of a firm’s R&D staff, defined in terms of education and skills, conditions the innovation impact of R&D subsidies. Using panel data for Spain, we find that the shares of Ph.Ds. and researchers within a firm’s R&D staff positively moderate the effect of national R&D subsidies on the production of technological knowledge. This fact shows the strategic value of Ph.Ds. and researchers in exploiting R&D subsidies. We also show that the contribution of Ph.Ds. is limited to the production of technological knowledge. In contrast, the contribution of researchers goes beyond the production of technological knowledge, also enhancing the R&D subsidy impact on the commercialisation of firms’ innovations.
This chapter will provide a perspective on microbiology as a significant contributor for timely delivery of the Sustainable Development Goals defined by the United Nations, with examples stemming from the Pasteurian era during which the ‘prepared minds’ played a key role.
Breakthrough innovations are expected to have a bigger impact on local economies than incremental innovations do. Yet past research has largely neglected the regional drivers of breakthrough innovations. Building on theories that highlight the role of personality psychology and human agency in shaping regional innovation cultures, we focus on psychological openness as a potential explanation for why some regions produce more breakthrough innovations than others do. We use a large data set of psychological personality profiles (∼1.26M individuals) to estimate the openness of people in metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) in the US. Our results reveal that psychological openness is strongly associated with the emergence of breakthrough innovations but not with the emergence of incremental innovations. The findings remained robust after controlling for an extensive set of predictors of regional innovation such as star inventors, star scientists, or knowledge diversity. The results held even when we used tolerance as an alternative indicator of openness. Taken together, our results provide robust evidence that openness is relevant for regional innovation performance, serving as an important predictor for breakthrough innovations but not for incremental innovations.
Explores how technological innovation has shaped and been shaped by science, industry, and economics in the twentieth century. Technological change and specific technologies have impacted productivity, the learning process, technology transfer and technology policies. Starting with a summary of historical literature on technical progress, the book goes on to discuss and promote Karl Marx's influential method of studying technology as the result of interrelated social processes -- especially emphasizing the mutual interaction between technology and the economy. Analysis of current empirical studies shows the need for an enlarged framework for understanding the relation between the economy and technical change. Technological interdependence in the American economy is analyzed, and later expanded to encompass international business. High-tech industries are discussed as particularly reliant upon scientific research. The commercial aircraft industry from 1925-75 is also examined, as an exemplary instance in which technological innovation and government support and regulation allowed for economic success. The book concludes that scientific progress is heavily influenced by technological considerations that are, in turn, shaped by industry and economics. Thus, decisions made in the private and public sectors should affect both supply and demand, favoring the creative, mutually advantageous connection between science and technology. (CJC)
Nobel laureates in science publish more and are more apt to collaborate than a matched sample of scientists. Interviews with 41 of 55 laureates and comparison of their research output with the output of the matched sample indicate that these patterns hold at every stage of the life-work-cycle. As laureates report and as their publications corroborate, they exercise noblesse oblige in arranging co-authorship in collaborative publications. Receipt of the Nobel prize is followed by declining productivity and changed work practices, as a result of changed role obligations and activities. Reductions in productivity are more severe for laureates who experience comparatively large increments in prestige through the prize than for those who were already eminent. The prize generates strain in collaborative associations so that most of these terminate soon after the award.
This paper examines the organizational arrangements used by New Biotechnology Firms (NBFs) to source scientific knowledge. Using data from two highly successful NBFs, the paper shows that both firms relied principally on hierarchies and networks to source scientific knowledge; market arrangements were insignificant. Most interesting, each firm had a very large, diversified set of boundary-spanning collaborative research arrangements, mostly involving university scientists. It is argued that these external research networks enabled the two firms studied to compete more successfully in a highly turbulent and highly competitive industry environment.
This paper makes the case that purposive, profit-seeking investments in knowledge play a critical role in the long-run growth process. First, the authors review the implications of neoclassical growth theory and the more recent theories of 'endogenous growth.' Then they discuss the empirical evidence that bears on the modeling of long-run growth. Finally, the authors describe in more detail a model of growth based on endogenous technological progress and discuss the lessons that such models can teach us. Copyright 1994 by American Economic Association.
This is a study of factors responsible for the wide cross-sectional differences in the past and current rates of use of hybrid seed corn in the United States. Logistic growth functions are fitted to the data by states and crop reporting districts, reducing differences among areas to differences in estimates of the three parameters of the logistic: origins, slopes, and ceilings. The lag in the development of adaptable hybrids for particular areas and the lag in the entry of seed producers into these areas (differences in origins) are explained on the basis of varying profitability of entry, "profitability" being a function of market density, and innovation and marketing cost. Differences in the long-run equilibrium use of hybrid corn (ceilings) and in the rates of approach to that equilibrium (slopes) are explained, at least in part, by differences in the profitability of the shift from open pollinated to hybrid varieties in different parts of the country. The results are summarized and the conclusion is drawn that the process of innovation, the process of adapting and distributing a particular invention to different markets and the rate at which it is accepted by entrepreneurs are amenable to economic analysis.
The set of technological opportunities in a given industry is one of the fundamental determinants of technical advance in that line of business. We examine the concept of technological opportunity and discuss three categories of sources of those opportunities: advances in scientific understanding and technique, technological advances originating in other industries and in other private and governmental institutions, and feedbacks from an industry's own technological advances. Data from the Yale Survey on Industrial Research and Development are used to measure the strength of various sources of technological opportunity and to discern interindustry differences in the importance of these sources. We find that interindustry differences in the strength and sources of technological opportunities contribute importantly to explanations of cross-industry variation in R&D intensity and technological advance.
This study develops an evolutionary theory of the capabilities and behavior of business firms operating in a market environment. It includes both general discussion and the manipulation of specific simulation models consistent with that theory. The analysis outlines the differences between an evolutionary theory of organizational and industrial change and a neoclassical microeconomic theory. The antecedents to the former are studies by economists like Schumpeter (1934) and Alchian (1950). It is contrasted with the orthodox theory in the following aspects: while the evolutionary theory views firms as motivated by profit, their actions are not assumed to be profit maximizing, as in orthodox theory; the evolutionary theory stresses the tendency of most profitable firms to drive other firms out of business, but, in contrast to orthodox theory, does not concentrate on the state of industry equilibrium; and evolutionary theory is related to behavioral theory: it views firms, at any given time, as having certain capabilities and decision rules, as well as engaging in various ‘search' operations, which determines their behavior; while orthodox theory views firm behavior as relying on the use of the usual calculus maximization techniques. The theory is then made operational by the use of simulation methods. These models use Markov processes and analyze selection equilibrium, responses to changing factor prices, economic growth with endogenous technical change, Schumpeterian competition, and Schumpeterian tradeoff between static Pareto-efficiency and innovation. The study's discussion of search behavior complicates the evolutionary theory. With search, the decision making process in a firm relies as much on past experience as on innovative alternatives to past behavior. This view combines Darwinian and Lamarkian views on evolution; firms are seen as both passive with regard to their environment, and actively seeking alternatives that affect their environment. The simulation techniques used to model Schumpeterian competition reveal that there are usually winners and losers in industries, and that the high productivity and profitability of winners confer advantages that make further success more likely, while decline breeds further decline. This process creates a tendency for concentration to develop even in an industry initially composed of many equal-sized firms. However, the experiments conducted reveal that the growth of concentration is not inevitable; for example, it tends to be smaller when firms focus their searches on imitating rather than innovating. At the same time, industries with rapid technological change tend to grow more concentrated than those with slower progress. The abstract model of Schumpeterian competition presented in the study also allows to see more clearly the public policy issues concerning the relationship between technical progress and market structure. The analysis addresses the pervasive question of whether industry concentration, with its associated monopoly profits and reduced social welfare, is a necessary cost if societies are to obtain the benefits of technological innovation. (AT)
A decade on after it first published to international acclaim, the seminal Handbook of Organization Studies has been updated to capture exciting new developments in the field. Providing a retrospective and prospective overview of organization studies, this Handbook continues to challenge and inspire readers with its synthesis of knowledge and literature. As ever, contributions have been selected to reflect the diversity of the field. New chapters cover areas such as organizational change, knowledge management and organizational networks.
Growth in this model is driven by technological change that arises from intentional investment decisions made by profit-maximizing agents. The distinguishing feature of the technology as an input is that it is not a conventional good or a public good; it is a nonrival, partially excludable good. Because of the noconvexity introduced by a nonrival good, price-taking competition cannot be supported. Instead, the equilibrium is one with monopolistic competition. The main conclusions are that the stock of human capital determines the rate of growth, that too little human capital is devoted to research in equilibrium, that integration into world markets will increase growth rates, and that a large population is not sufficient to generate growth. Copyright 1990 by University of Chicago Press.
This paper argues that the 'scale effects' prediction of many recent R&D-based models of growth is inconsistent with the time-series evidence from industrialized economies. A modified version of the Romer model that is consistent with this evidence is proposed, but the extended model alters a key implication usually found in endogenous growth theory. Although growth in the extended model is generated endogenously through R&D, the long-run growth rate depends only on parameters that are usually taken to be exogenous, including the rate of population growth. Copyright 1995 by University of Chicago Press.
Traditional growth theory emphasizes the incentives for capital accumulation rather than technological progress. Innovation is treated as an exogenous process or a by-product of investment in machinery and equipment. Grossman and Helpman develop a unique approach in which innovation is viewed as a deliberate outgrowth of investments in industrial research by forward-looking, profit-seeking agents.
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