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Network prominence and innovation: An empirical analysis of corporate backed biotech spin-offs
Daniele Mascia
Department of Hygiene and Public Health, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Rome, Italy
Mats Magnusson
Department of Innovation Engineering and Management, Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg, Sweden
Americo Cicchetti
Department of Hygiene and Public Health, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Rome, Italy
Abstract
With increasing dynamics and complexity in the biotechnology industry, pharmaceutical companies are forced to broaden the scope of their R&D operations, increasingly relying on external sources of new knowledge. In this context, corporate venturing emerges as an interesting means to exploit new entrepreneurial sources of innovation.
By investing in academic spin-offs, and thereby establishing relationships with academic R&D actors, knowledge dispersed in scientific and academic networks can be accessed by the pharmaceutical companies. In this way, equity investments in academic spin-offs present a potential to improve the investors' innovation performance.
Based on a study of 97 corporate-backed academic spin-offs in the biotech field, this paper investigates how structural characteristics of these spin-offs' R&D networks influence the innovativeness of big pharmaceutical companies that provide venture capital to the spin-offs. In particular, the effect of a spin-off's prominence in its knowledge network is analyzed, using different network centrality measures.
The results obtained show that investments in academic spin-offs holding prominent positions in their R&D networks significantly contribute to the innovativeness of their investors, in terms of the number of patents resulting from these collaborations.
Keywords
biotechnology pharmaceuticals, external sources, academic spin-offs, R&D networks, investor performance, patents
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