If firms do less scientific research, and yet their innovation increasingly relies upon science, how do they gain access to scientific knowledge? To explore the role of interpersonal networks among corporate inventors and academic scientists in facilitating the transfer of scientific knowledge from academia to industry, we construct the collaboration network spanning all authors in PubMed and all inventors on U.S.patents. To isolate the influence of interpersonal networks from the inherent characteristics and commercial potential of scientific discoveries, we use paper twins − scientific papers with the same or nearly identical findings published around the same time by different academic teams − and analyze their citations in corporate patents. Although academic science is traditionally viewed as a public good, our findings underscore the critical role of interpersonal relationships in harnessing academic science for corporate innovation. Importantly, the ability of corporate inventors to leverage their interpersonal connections to academic scientists is fully contingent on their own active involvement in both scientific research and commercial technology development, particularly when this scientific research closely aligns with the academic insights they use for industrial applications
Contact person: Daehyun Kim
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