Mapping national knowledge networks: Scientists, firms, and institutions in biotechnology in the United States and France

This study investigates how national institutions influence innovation in a science-based industry. The context is the biotechnology industry in the United States and France, two countries with strong scientific and financial resources, but very different experiences in innovating from scientific discoveries. The study seeks to explain why scientific discoveries have led to the emergence a new industry in the United States but not in France, and how national differences in organizational demographics and the mobility of research scientists impact innovation outcomes. Drawing on the literature on comparative systems and technological networks, the study employs fieldwork, analysis of primary data, and statistical modeling. It tracks the patenting of over 15,000 scientists to map out national knowledge-sharing networks that include research laboratories, large firms and entrepreneurial start-ups. The effects of organizational form and scientists' mobility are included in models of innovative performance. Separate chapters compare the history, policies and institutions governing laboratory-firm technology transfer and the careers of scientists. The focus is on the incentives of scientists to align themselves with entrepreneurial firms. In France, prestigious research institutions are a civil service, and there are strong incentives for scientists to remain employed by public-sector laboratories. In the United States, scientists' careers embody a great deal of individual entrepreneurship and job mobility. As a result, entrepreneurial firms can more easily recruit academic scientists in the United States than in France. These differences are reflected in patent data that reveal very different organizational demographics. The models of patent citations show that the presence of entrepreneurial firms and specific pathways of mobility by scientists are associated with highly-cited patents in both countries. National innovative capacity is closely tied to institutions that shape organizational demographics and the incentives of scientists to exchange knowledge across organizational boundaries. The study highlights the importance of individual researchers in science-based industries, and shows that their contributions to innovation are strongly shaped by the national networks in which they are embedded.