(NAS Colloquium) Science, Technology and the Economy (1996) / Chapter Skim
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Star scientists and institutional transformation: Patterns of invention and innovation in the formation of the biotechnology…
Star scientists and institutional transformation: Patterns of invention and innovation in the formation of the biotechnology…
Pages 55-62
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From page 55... ...
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.
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From page 56... ...
§All remaining stars who ever published in the United States. discoveries with such a high degree of natural excludability, so that the knowledge must be viewed as embodied in particular scientists' "intellectual human capital," will yield supranormal labor income for scientists who embody the knowledge until the discovery has sufficiently diffused to eliminate the quasirents in excess of the normal returns on the cost of acquiring the knowledge as a routine part of a scientist's human capitals Thus, we argue that the geographic distribution of a new science-based industry can importantly derive from the geographic distribution of the intellectual human capital embodying the breakthrough discovery upon which it is based.
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From page 57... ...
. As Table 2 shows, ties of star scientists to NBSs have emerged slowly in response to the demands for strong ties between universities or research institutes and firms, accounting for under 7% of the articles produced by affiliated or linked stars through 1985 and only increase to about 13% in the 1986-1990 time period.= The resistance of preexisting firms to transformation is understated even by these disproportionately low rates, since the NBSs have generally many more employees than NBFs and since the majority of incumbent firms in the pharmaceutical and other effected industries had not yet begun to use biotechnology by 1990 and so are not included in our NBS count.
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From page 58... ...
In these same regressions we also found evidence of significant positive effects from the other intellectual human capital variables, which serve as proxy measures for the number of other significant scientists working in areas used by NBEs which do not result in much if any reported genetic-sequence discoveries. Adding variables describing the local and national economic conditions improved the explanatory power of the intellectual capital variables relatively little (as judged by the logarithm of the likelihood function)
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From page 59... ...
Over all three measures of NBE success analyzed (5) , there is a strong positive coefficient estimated on the number of articles written by firm scientists collaborating with local linked stars.
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From page 60... ...
The conclusion is that star scientists play a key role in regional and national economic growth for advanced economies, at least for those science-based technologies where knowledge is tacit and requires hands-on experience. Given the widespread concern about growth and "international competitiveness," we present in Table 3 comparative data for the top 10 countries in biotechnology on the distribution, commercial involvement, and migration of star scientists.
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From page 61... ...
Clearly, there are very substantial implications for economic growth and development involved in whether a nation's scientific infrastructure leads to the emergence of numerous stars and is conducive to their involvement in the commercialization of their discoveries.° Commercialization is more a traffic rotary than a two-way street: More commercialization yields greater short-run growth, but this may be offset in the future if the development of basic science is adversely affected. Commercial involvement of the very best scientists provides them greatly increased resources and is associated with increased scientific productivity as measured by citations.
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From page 62... ...
Sloan Foundation through the National Bureau of Economic Research Research Program on Industrial Technology and Productivity, the National Science Foundation (SES 9012925) , the University of California Systemwide Biotechnology Research and Education Program, and the University of California's Pacific Rim Research Program.
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