The Handbook of Technology and Innovation Management

12.3. The Biotechnology Industry: The View FROM Within THE Industry

To better understand the role of individual collaborations in innovation, we conducted semi-structured interviews with ten scientists (senior scientific officers) from two European firms and eight US firms. Every interviewee had a Ph.D. and three previously held leading positions in university laboratories.

Our interviews suggest that individual collaborations are indeed an important part of the research process of biotechnology firms. When researchers need additional insights or knowledge inputs in areas they are investigating, they identify potential collaborators based on their personal and professional networks or simply based on an Internet search. As one researcher put it, they 'go down the list' until a suitable collaborator is found. The researchers in biotechnology firms and their academic partners have different motivations for collaboration. For researchers within firms, these collaborations are usually targeted to fill a particular knowledge gap that emerges during the research process. Although the immediate motivation for collaboration may be to successfully conduct research that leads to patentable inventions, this activity often leads to co-authored publications as well. This may explain why such a large percentage of publications in scientific journals have coauthors from different organizations. Small firms particularly use publications to gain legitimacy in the scientific and investment community. ...