My research explores science-technology links, external knowledge sourcing, and how individual connectivity enhances technological innovation. I study the mechanisms through which scientific knowledge translates into commercial applications and the role of social networks in facilitating innovation.
Working Papers
Harnessing Academic Science for Corporate Technology: The Role of Interpersonal Networks and Absorptive Capacity
with Sam Arts and Lee Fleming
Revise and Resubmit at Organization Science
If firms conduct less scientific research internally and yet increasingly rely on science for innovation, how do they gain access to external scientific knowledge? To examine the role of interpersonal networks among corporate inventors and academic scientists in facilitating scientific knowledge transfer from academia to industry, we construct the social network encompassing nearly the entire population of life science academic scientists and corporate inventors listed on U.S. patents. To isolate the influence of interpersonal connections from the inherent characteristics and commercial potential of scientific discoveries, we leverage paper twins—scientific papers with nearly identical findings published around the same time by independent academic teams—and analyze their citations in corporate patents. Although academic science is often viewed as a public good, our findings highlight the critical role of interpersonal connections—within two degrees of separation—in harnessing academic science for corporate innovation. Moreover, the ability of corporate inventors to leverage their connections to academic scientists depends upon their own active engagement in scientific research as well as the alignment of their scientific expertise with the academic knowledge they seek to integrate.
Public Science, Private Priority: Social Networks and Firms’ Early Use of Academic Science
with Sam Arts
Academic science is publicly disclosed, yet firms do not act on the same discoveries at the same time. We argue and show that this timing matters: firms that incorporate scientific discoveries earlier can establish technological priority and develop broader and more valuable intellectual property. We theorize that early use depends on corporate inventors’ social proximity to the academic scientists who produce relevant discoveries. Social proximity helps inventors overcome two barriers that persist after public disclosure. First, it increases visibility: socially closer inventors are more likely to notice relevant discoveries earlier. Second, it supports interpretation: socially closer inventors are better positioned to understand how discoveries can be translated into technological applications. We test these arguments using a large-scale network linking all corporate inventors on U.S. patents to the near population of life-science scientists from 1975 to 2009. Measuring social distance before paper publication, we compare corporate patents that cite the same scientific paper. We find that socially closer inventors are more likely to cite a paper first and to cite it sooner. Consistent with a visibility mechanism, the advantage of social proximity is greater when public visibility is weaker: for papers in less commercially visible and lower-impact journals, and for paywalled papers. Consistent with an interpretation mechanism, the advantage of social proximity is greater when interpretive barriers are higher: for more complex and less readable papers. Our findings show that public science becomes a source of private advantage not simply because it is disclosed, but because firms differ in their social position to notice, interpret, and act on scientific discoveries before others do.
Prior to my doctoral studies, my work in educational consulting and data science led to several peer-reviewed publications.