Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP9215
Authors: Bruno Cassiman; Sam Arts; Reinhilde Veugelers
Abstract: We study the process of how firms access basic research and translate this into applied research. Drawing on basic research firms develop higher quality technologies and develop these technologies more intensely internally. Critical in this process are boundary crossing inventors ? inventors that access basic research by active involvement in basic research projects and subsequent involvement in the development of more applied technologies. Nevertheless, these boundary crossing inventors need to be embedded in a complementary institutional relation between the firm and the organization developing the basic research to have an effect. We examine this process through IMEC, an important basic research organization in nano-electronics, with the explicit mission to bridge the gap between basic research done at universities and applied research developed by industry.
Keywords: basic research; industry-science links; inventor partnerships; patents
JEL Codes: O33
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| boundary crossing inventors + imec partnership (O36) | higher quality innovations (L15) |
| boundary crossing inventors (O36) | innovation quality of partner firms (O36) |
| imec partnership + boundary crossing inventors (O36) | higher forward citations of patents (O34) |
| imec partnership + boundary crossing inventors (O36) | higher proportion of self-citations in patents (O34) |
| imec partnership (O36) | effectiveness of boundary crossing inventors (O36) |