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This paper explores how and why collaboration with different types of partners and the position within a research network can affect firms' innovative performance in terms of product innovations. A detailed empirical analysis is carried out in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry. This industry is characterized by a rapidly developing, complex, and dispersed knowledge base, where one would expect positive benefits from collaboration and the position within a network for innovative output. The paper uses a unique dataset in pharmaceutical cancer research based on scientific co-publications and new drug approvals. We apply social network analysis and count data regressions. We observe that collaboration with a diverse set of partners from academia and the network position in terms of eigenvector centrality is positively related to product innovation. However, we do not find a general positive association between collaboration, particularly with biotechnology companies, and product innovation or between central network positions and product innovation. Therefore, these results require a re-assessment of the role of scientific collaboration and biotechnology companies in the development of the pharmaceutical industry.

This study aims at analyzing the differences in the factors that influence the probability of knowledge transfer within industry and from industry to science in the biotechnology sector. In order to model these knowledge flows a citation analysis on the basis of patent data was conducted and a weighted bivariate probit model was estimated on the citation probability of industry and science on the basis of a combined sample of citing and cited patent pairs and an equal number of control patent pairs. The empirical results suggest that there are considerable differences in the citation probability. Cultural closeness for instance has a positive effect on the citation probability from industry to industry while the citation probability of scientific institutions is not affected by cultural distance.

Seit 2000 sind die Patentanmeldungen mit Hochschulbeteiligung zurückgegangen. Haben sich die Voraussetzungen für Hochschulpatente geändert? Welche Forschungsbereiche sind davon betroffen? Inwieweit spielt dabei die Biotechnologie eine Rolle? Was sind die Ursachen für den Rückgang?

The BioRegio contest and the BioProfile contest initiated by the German Federal Government have drawn much international attention as prototypes of a new kind of technology policy aiming at the exploitation of regional innovation and growth potential through clustering. There is, however, little systematic analysis of their actual impact on the development of commercial biotechnology in Germany. The current paper tries to fill this gap. We find that although these contests have catalyzed the emergence and early growth of German commercial biotech it takes more than isolated policy action by national governments to grow a self-sustainable biotech industry in Europe.

In this study we have collected information by interviewing all identified parties within the Finnish forest sector who might have a potential biotechnology connection : university research groups, research institutions, small and medium-sized biotechnology-companies and up to the largest forest companies. The ultimate goal was to assess how resources have been allocated and biotechnologies utilized within the value chain of the entire forest sector. This study aimed at providing answers to the following questions : • What are the current Finnish academic resources and projects related to forest industry biotechnology? • How much does the Finnish forest cluster invest in biotechnology R&D activity, and what are the key application areas in the value chain? • How well do the academic resources, company R&D investments and research needs converge to help secure the future competitiveness of the Finnish forest industries? In order to answer the questions above, the study approached the matter in consecutive steps. First, the existing forest industry related biotechnological knowledge base within the academia on one hand, and the resource base among firms on the other hand, were mapped. Following up on that, we evaluated the sales expectations of forestry related biotechnological applications within the domestic forestry cluster itself, other potential domestic industries and global export markets. The third step assessed whether the development of forestry related biotechnological applications is justifiable in the framework of comparative advantage. This was accomplished by comparing the relevant existing knowledge and other resource bases to their sales expectations. In order to evaluate the potential of biotechnology in the entire forest industry value chain, the study assessed four value chain modules. Module 1 represents the beginning of the value chain : forestry applications. Module 2 consists of the development of wood products, module 3 is related to the pulp and paper industry, and module 4 to utilization side streams for bioenergy, biochemicals and other food or pharmaceutical applications. The assessment of module 1 implies that there is a constant lack of resources. Basic research conducts some relatively long projects, which often seem too time-consuming in applied research and corporate R&D. There seems to be only few active links between the academic research projects and companies. Many new technologies already exist but since the individual forest owners hardly have incentives to invest in R&D due to e.g. the long breeding cycle, collaboration with companies seems as the only potential pathway to commercialization of forestry related biotechnologies. There were few biotechnology-based projects within the module 2. The research and product development seems to focus on physical modifications, and composite research is based on chemistry. Module 3, paper, pulp and board industry, seems to be the most active in research and product development activity. Their products generate positive cash flows, and research projects are abundantly funded. The companies are closely involved in the research projects as financiers and collaborators. This involvement impacts on the nature of the research, which seems highly applicable and linked closely to industrial applications. Consequently, biotechnology applications are already used in the pulp and paper industry. Some biotechnology applications are adopted rapidly. They, such as enzymes in reducing paper machine runnability problems, do not affect the quality of the fibers, intermediate or end products and are thus easier to take into use in production scale. We observed the research and product development within module 4 as a high priority for both the academia and industry. The research is anticipated to grow strongly and even more than in other modules. Biotechnologies are applied as substitutes to chemical and thermal technologies. However, all of these fields of technology are developed and applied by the industry. This provides some important implications for technology development and innovation policy. Due to the fuzziness between technology border-lines, it seems misleading to prioritize biotechnologies over some other technology; in contrast, the most efficient technology should be preferred. Accordingly, technology subsidies might be most efficient if the public technology programmes would be based on application segments instead of a specific technology. Our assessment of international patenting activity raised some interesting notions. Finland seemed to be comparatively most specialized in plant genetic engineering, food and food additive, and waste disposal and the environment applications. However, biotechnology based biofuels are not included as a source of comparative advantage, which also stresses the importance of parallel development of biotechnologies and other technology fields. A potential source of value creation could be the utilization of process side streams more efficiently, including refinement of by-products such as tall oil, to products with higher value added in other application areas.The paper and board making might also be strongly influenced by new packaging solutions, materials and methods; these utilize, however, only rarely or never biotechnologies as such. Finland has a good overall and mainly publicly maintained infrastructure. If the raw material’s high quality and some special features can compensate the relatively low growth rates, Finland should be able to attract the multinational pulp and paper industry also in the long term. We conclude that the development of biotechnologies should not contain any intrinsic value per se. The commercial value of the biotechnology could be benchmarked with the value of alternative technologies; and consequently, biotechnology could become part of the technology options for companies active in established and conventional industries. The Finnish forest cluster has financial resources to commercialize any new technology that can increase the process efficiency or provide other economic benefits in new application areas. This is a reason why we see this area exceptionally promising compared to any other high technology field without such a financial backbone.

Motivated by concerns about the organizational and institutional conditions that foster research creativity in science, we focus on how creative research can be defined, operationalized, and empirically identified. A functional typology of research creativity is proposed encompassing theoretical, methodological and empirical developments in science. We then apply this typology through a process of creative research event identification in the fields of nanotechnology and human genetics in Europe and the United States, combining nominations made by several hundred experts with data on prize winners. Characteristics of creative research in the two respective fields are analyzed, and there is a discussion of broader insights offered by our approach.

The paper tests empirically the role of knowledge stocks to explain the regional distribution of Germany's biotechnology founders. We present an unique approach to highlight the role of knowledge spillovers as we differentiate according the local embeddedness and research affinity of founders. As expected, the results of our multivariate analysis indicate a high start-up activity in knowledge intensive regions. Group differentiation shows that knowledge stock variables matter only for academic founders inside as well as outside the region. In contrast, the start-up activity of non-academic founders coming from inside or outside the region cannot be explained with knowledge intensity of the region. Our empirical results suggest that knowledge spillovers matter, but these spillovers only attract founders with high affinity to research.

The German biotechnology industry missed the accession of this key technology in the 1980s. Policy makers make different efforts to overcome shortcomings and recent gaps. Public funding schemes have been implemented to establish a flourish biotech industry in Germany. We assume that R&D policy was driven blind by the idea to catch up with world?s biotech leaders and analyse if Germany?s R&D policy lost its origins. We do examine, if Germany sacrifice economic funding principles, in particular not discriminating different kinds of ?risk? in the field of biotechnology. The study combines survey data of German biotech companies and public R&D funding data on the firm level. The results shed light on the factors which determine public R&D funding and firm?s probability of being funded.

The need for the strategic initiatives for biotechnology strategy emerged in interviews with 90 Finnish biotechnology leaders in the ETLA Biotechnology Survey, conducted at the end of 2004. This paper discusses on the policy implications for the project on “The biotechnology industry as a part of the Finnish National Innovation System” financed by Tekes, the National Technology Agency of Finland. Tekes has strongly encouraged the formation of policy implications and strategic initiatives for the biotechnology sector of Finland. Healthcare technology has been regarded as the main application area of biotechnology, but the applications of plant and process biotechnology are gaining in importance. Irrespective of the application area, the technological interests and the market potential are global. A typical example is in the production of food, where products such as Golden rice and Bt (bacillus thuringiensis) wheat are discussed as a step towards balancing the global inequality of food production. However, this discussion paper focuses on the potential synergy between innovation clusters in a domestic context. We have identified global megatrends that impose a threat on the future well-being of Finland. Our aim has been to try to take advantage of the megatrends and turn them into opportunities within the context of sustainable development1: Firstly, the ageing population will induce a threat to the supply of public healthcare for everyone. Healthcare related “red” biotechnology might play an important role in the restriction of increases in healthcare costs by providing new cost-efficient healthcare applications. Additionally, some applications for functional food might offer pro-actively some positive health outcomes before there are any costs affected by an illness. In many cases, it would be more cost-efficient to create preventive mechanisms than treat those illnesses. Secondly, the extensive use of fossil fuels has been proclaimed as posing a major threat to the global bio-system. Thirdly, as oil reservoirs outside the Middle East are becoming depleted, the rising prices together with geographically skewed production will probably strain the existing economic balance. However, applications of plant “green” biotechnology and industrial “white” biotechnology could provide some solutions for producing, for example, bio-fuels instead of polluting fossil-fuels, as well as growing specified crops that take advantage of the Arctic dimension of the Finnish environment. Based on literature and the megatrends affecting Finland as a whole, we have outlined four innovation clusters

This paper considers the U.S. Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program as a policy fostering academic entrepreneurship. We highlight two main characteristics of the program that make it attractive as an entrepreneurship policy : early-stage financing and scientist involvement in commercialization. Using unique data on NIH supported biomedical researchers, we trace the incidence of biomedical entrepreneurship through SBIR and describe some of the characteristics of these individuals. To explore the importance of early-stage financing and scientist involvement, we complement our individual level data with information on scientist-linked and non-linked SBIR firms. Our results show that the SBIR program is being used as a commercialization channel by academic scientists. Moreover, we find that the firms associated with these scientists perform significantly better than other non-linked SBIR firms in terms of followon venture capital funding, SBIR program completion, and patenting.

Regions with biotechnology-specific knowledge seem to have best chances to attract potential entrepreneurs to establish a biotechnology-firm. Furthermore, regional oriented technology policy is supposed to stimulate the creation process of biotechnology clusters, too. The BioRegio contest (BRC) is the most prominent example for this kind of policy support. The analysis tries to test both hypotheses empirically. Our estimation results are in accordance with expectations and empirical evidence for the US: Scientists at public research institutes are key players for the commercialization of radical biotechnology discoveries in the region of their place. BRC participating regions have best conditions to attract biotech companies on average. Further, exclusive financial support of BRC winning regions does not contribute significantly to cluster biotechnology industry stronger than in non-winning regions.

Tämä raportti koskee biotekniikka-alan patentointikäytäntöjä. Keksintöjen hyödyntämisen turvaaminen patenttien avulla on biotekniikka-alalla erittäin tärkeää pitkien tuotekehittelyprosessien vuoksi. Silti kaikki alan yritykset eivät patentoi. Lääkekehitysyritykset patentoivat eniten ja tällä sovellusalueella tuotteiden kehittämisja hyväksymisprosessit ovat pisimpiä. Erilaiset aineettomien oikeuksien suojaamistavat täydentävät toisiaan sen sijaan, että ne olisivat toistensa vaihtoehtoja. Selvitys osoitti edelleen, ettei tietojen tulkinta ole helppoa eri tietolähteiden erojen vuoksi. Silti voidaan todeta, että suomalaisten patentointi biotekniikka-alalla kasvoi varsin voimakkaasti 1990-luvulla. 2000-luvun alun laskevien patentoimismäärien perusteella on vielä liian aikaista todeta, ovatko kysymyksessä patentoinnin määrällinen lasku vai vain viiveet patentointiprosessissa. Erityisesti Euroopan Patenttijärjestelmässä havaittiin suuria viiveitä patentoimisprosessissa. This paper reports some experimental results obtained in a study of biotechnology patenting in Finland, particularly by biotechnology companies. Securing the commercial utilisation of inventions through patenting is highly important in the biotechnology field. Still, not all companies patent. Drug development companies patent more than other biotechnology companies, perhaps reflecting the fact that firms in the application area face the longest product development and approval times. Companies tend to pursue different ways of securing immaterial rights, which appear to be complementary, not substitutes. The study showed that interpreting the findings is difficult because of differences in the data sources. Nevertheless, overall, Finnish patenting activity in the biotechnology area grew substantially in the 1990s. A declining trend in patenting emerged in the early 2000s, but it may be the result of delays in the patenting process. Delays are quite long, particularly in patent applications filed through the European Patenting Office.

This paper portrays the characteristics of Finnish biotechnology SMEs that have their origin in academic research conducted in universities or other comparable research institutions. The portrayal facilitates the positioning of these firms within the sector as a whole and, even more importantly, enables the identification of strengths and weaknesses of academic biotechnology spin-offs as well as external factors that either promote or inhibit their prosperity from an entrepreneurial perspective. Leaning on results of a linear regression analysis based on a sample of 65 companies, it is found that academic biotechnology spin-offs are constraint in several ways. First, they lack a clear market-oriented focus as well as the commercial sense and skills to strategically direct their organization as a business towards the markets. Second, a very traditional and detached perception and definition of the academia’s role and task within society – the concept of the “ivory tower” – makes it difficult for the companies to attract skilled labour. And last, Finland’s equity markets are underdeveloped. New seed capital is next to unavailable, as private and foreign venture capitalists invest only in companies that are already very close to the markets. Tämä tutkimus kuvaa yliopistoissa tai vastaavissa tutkimusinstituutioissa tapahtuvaan akateemiseen tutkimukseen pohjautuvien pienten ja keskisuurten bioteknologiayritysten piirteitä. Kuvaus mahdollistaa yritysten asemoinnin suhteessa koko bioteknologia- alaan. Lisäksi kuvauksen pohjalta voidaan tunnistaa tutkimuksen kohteena olevien yritysten heikkouksia ja vahvuuksia sekä ulkopuoliset tekijät, jotka ovat yritysten kehityksen kannalta hyödyllisiä ja haitallisia. Tutkimuksessa käytetyn regressioanalyysin tulosten pohjalta voidaan todeta, että akateemiset spin-off-yritykset kärsivät monenlaisista rajoitteista. Ensiksikin heiltä puuttuu usein selkeä markkinaorientoitunut lähestymistapa sekä kaupallinen osaaminen, joita tarvitaan markkinoilla menestymiseen. Tämän lisäksi vallitseva käsitys, jonka mukaan akateemisten instituutioiden rooli ja yhteiskunnallinen tehtävä ovat perinteisiä ja kaupallisesta toiminnasta eristäytyneitä – metafora norsunluutornista – haittaa yritysten kykyä rekrytoida kyvykkäitä työntekijöitä. Ongelmaksi muodostuu myös Suomen pääomamarkkinoiden alikehittyneisyys tietyiltä osin. Tärkeää perustamisvaiheen rahoitusta on vaikea saada kun yksityiset ja ulkomaiset pääomasijoittajat sijoittavat pääasiallisesti yrityksiin, jotka ovat jo hyvin lähellä markkinoita.

The decisive statutory provision of the EU for patent protection of genetic engineering inventions is the so-called directive on biotechnological patents (DBP). Its objective is the encouragement of research and development in the genetic engineering sector. The following exposition shows that the DBP has two major flaws from the economist's point of view, under which particularly small and medium-sized enterprises, the driving force of this young line of business, suffer.

Since naturally occurring genetic information serves as a valuable input for biotechnological R&D, the private provision of genetic resources could generate income for the protection of biodiversity-rich areas. However, there has been a controversy over whether these potential revenues are sufficient to compensate for the costs of protection and, therefore, whether markets for genetic resources can effectively contribute to the conservation of biodiversity. In this paper, a market framework is developed to describe possible market outcomes, each with a different impact on conservation. It turns out that the market-induced incentives to conserve depend on the specific situation on the supply and demand side of the market.

"Bis vor kurzem war es vorherrschende Meinung, daß die deutsche Volkswirtschaft es versäumt hatte, marktorientierte Innovationskompetenzen zu entwickeln, um in Biotechnologie, Informationstechnologie und anderen neuen Hochtechnologiebranchen erfolgreich am Wettbewerb teilnehmen zu können. Seit Mitte der neunziger Jahre verfolgt die Bundesregierung eine neue Technologiepolitik mit dem Ziel, die Entwicklung kleiner Hochtechnologieunternehmen zu initiieren und zu unterstützen. Dies führte bisher zu mehreren hundert Neugründungen. Die Unternehmensstrategien vieler dieser Unternehmen weichen sehr stark von jenen Handlungsmustern ab, die normalerweise mit den kleinen und mittelständischen deutschen Unternehmen assoziiert werden. Diese Entwicklungen in Deutschland stellen eine interessante Herausforderung an die vorherrschende Institutionentheorie dar, wie sie zur Analyse hochentwickelter Volkswirtschaften verwendet wird. Danach werden die spezifischen Merkmale von Unternehmen weitgehend als Folge prägender nationaler institutioneller Rahmenbedingungen verstanden. In der vorliegenden Studie der Biotechnologie-Branche wird der relative Einfluß nationaler Institutionengefüge als ein gegensätzlicher Ansatz zu den in Deutschland noch vorherrschenden sektorspezifischen Politiken untersucht. Die Analyse der neugegründeten Unternehmen zeigt, daß diese neue Technologiepolitik den Weg zu erweiterten Möglichkeiten im ökonomischen Handeln geebnet und damit zum ersten Mal die systematische Förderung von Hochtechnologie-Unternehmen ermöglicht hat. Trotzdem: Die vorherrschenden Strategien der Spezialisierung auf definierte Märkte und die Organisationsmuster der untersuchten Unternehmen werden nach wie vor von den Anreizen und Einschränkungen des lange bestehenden nationalen Institutionengefüges stark geprägt." (Autorenreferat) "The German economy has widely been seen as failing to develop commercial innovation competencies necessary to compete in biotechnology, information technology, and other emerging new industries. Starting in the mid-1990s the German government has instituted a series of new technology policies designed to orchestrate the development of small entrepreneurial technology firms. These policies have fostered several hundred new entrepreneurial start-ups in Germany, many of which have adopted strategies that differ dramatically from those commonly associated with small and medium sized German firms. Developments in Germany represent an interesting challenge to prevailing institutional theory as applied to the study of advanced industrial economies, which tends to view the characteristics of organizations as strongly constrained by the orientation of a number of key national institutional frameworks. Focusing on biotechnology, this article examines the relative importance of national institutional frameworks as opposed to sector-specific policies that are presently pervasive in Germany. Analysis of the new firms demonstrates that Germany's new technology policies have facilitated important extensions within the business system that have, for the first time, allowed the systematic promotion of entrepreneurial technology companies. However, the dominant strategies of market specialization and company organizational patterns found within these companies have been strongly influenced by incentives and constraints created by long-established national institutional structures." (author's abstract)

German technology policy has undergone a remarkable change during the last years. The first thing to mention is that technology policy in Germany takes a broader view now, focussing not only on knowledge creation (i.e. the invention process per se) but also on knowledge diffusion and faster commercialization. The second noteworthy change is the growing importance of regions as reference units for technology policy initiatives. The most prominent example is the BioRegio-contest initiated by the Federal Research Ministry in which 17 German regions compete for a given amount of public funding.The BioRegiocontest, its meaning for the German innovation system and some of its regional consequences are analyzed in this paper.