| Abstract: |
While their expertise and scientific excellence make academic star scientists
attractive collaboration partners for firms, this study indicates that firms
face difficulties in capturing value from collaborations with academic stars.
Stars are time constrained, may be less committed to commercialization, and
can be a source of undesired knowledge spillovers to other firms. The purpose
of this study is to recognize the contingencies under which collaboration with
star scientists is positively associated with a firm’s ability to produce
valuable patents (invention performance). We analyze a panel dataset on the
collaborations in basic research(publication data) and invention performance
(patent output) of 60 prominent pharmaceutical firms. We find that basic
research collaboration with academic stars is on average not associated with a
performance premium above the overall positive influence of collaborating with
academia. We only observe this premium if the star scientist abstains from
simultaneous collaboration with other firms (‘dedication’) and extend her
collaboration with the firm to involvenot only basic but also applied research
(‘translation’). Extending prior work that has focused on corporate star
scientists, we find that if the collaboration involves an internal firm star
scientist, a translational contribution of the academic star is no longer a
prerequisite, and may even be detrimental to inventive performance. Our
findings inform the literatures on industry-science links and firms’
(scientific) absorptive capacity by revealing the crucial contingencies for
firms to benefit from partnering with the best and brightest among academic
scientists. Practitioner Points: - Intuitively we may expect that
collaborating with the very top among academics benefits firms, yet
collaborating with these academic star scientists also entails important
challenges. - Organizations seeking to benefit from the extraordinary
expertise of academic star scientists should take into account two important
conditions: o The top academic should be a dedicated collaboration partner,
and avoid simultaneous collaboration with other firms. o The top academic
should not only be involved in basic research but also in applied research
collaboration with the firm, enhancing her ability to assist the firm in the
translation of research into a marketable product. - When the firm also
employs a star scientist who is engaged in the collaborative research with an
academic star scientist, the translation of the joint research is better
performed by the internally employed star scientists instead of the academic
star scientist. |