Research Policy最新文献

When the drugs (don’t) work: The role of science in product commercialization

IF 7.5 1区管理学

Research Policy Pub Date : 2025-04-09 DOI: 10.1016/j.respol.2025.105237

Paul-Emmanuel Anckaert

{"title":"When the drugs (don’t) work: The role of science in product commercialization","authors":"Paul-Emmanuel Anckaert","doi":"10.1016/j.respol.2025.105237","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.respol.2025.105237","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>While the relationship between science and firms’ innovation performance has been extensively studied, little is known about how the nature of scientific input affects successful product commercialization. This paper aims to address this gap by analyzing data linking scientific publications to the eventual product market outcomes of early-stage drug candidates in the pharmaceutical industry. Examining the basic and applied nature of the scientific knowledge base underlying 5,613 early-stage drug candidates from 1995 to 2008, I find that despite the importance of advances made in basic science, its predictive and abstract outcomes on their own are unlikely to foster the development of drug candidates that achieve market approval. The substantial gap between the predictive rules from basic research and the unpredictable outcomes that emerge in variable states of human physiology, seems to limit the extent to which fundamental insights from basic science reduce the uncertainty related to the complexity of the human body in the real-world environment. In contrast, I show that early-stage drug candidates that combine fundamental insights from basic research and contextualized insights from applied science are significantly more likely to achieve market approval. This effect is particularly pronounced when these drugs have a more novel character and when firms leverage their own contextualized insights in the development of these drugs.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48466,"journal":{"name":"Research Policy","volume":"54 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2025-04-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143799330","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Academic inbreeding and productivity of STEM early career researchers in different environments

IF 7.5 1区管理学

Research Policy Pub Date : 2025-04-09 DOI: 10.1016/j.respol.2025.105240

Victoria Slepykh

{"title":"Academic inbreeding and productivity of STEM early career researchers in different environments","authors":"Victoria Slepykh","doi":"10.1016/j.respol.2025.105240","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.respol.2025.105240","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Academic inbreeding at the individual level is a characteristic of a scholar's career, when they work in the same organisations where they studied. The phenomenon is usually associated with reduced quality of human capital, low circulation of knowledge and ineffective human capital allocation. However, there are a number of countries where academic inbreeding is widespread, but how it affects the research productivity of early career researchers has not been sufficiently explored. This article aims to specify the correlation between academic inbreeding and the individual productivity of early-career researchers within the system characterised by the high level of inbreeding. The study uses environments with different infrastructural and organisational conditions as moderators to clarify the peculiarities of the relationship. Based on data about 1132 early-career researchers in four fields of study it was found that the publication activity of inbred-researchers does not differ from that of their mobile counterparts at prestigious organisations or in regions having middle and small number of academic organisations. However, academic inbreeding negatively correlates with research productivity at universities without special status and in metropolitan regions. Thus, when the organisational environment provides a high quality of human capital for its graduates, the effect of academic inbreeding is mitigated. The same effect of inbreeding is observed in environments with poor choice of employers.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48466,"journal":{"name":"Research Policy","volume":"54 6","pages":"Article 105240"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2025-04-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143800042","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Allocating time on scientific platforms in outer space: Evidence from James Webb Space Telescope Cycle 1-3 general observer programs

IF 7.5 1区管理学

Research Policy Pub Date : 2025-04-07 DOI: 10.1016/j.respol.2025.105239

Christopher Williams

{"title":"Allocating time on scientific platforms in outer space: Evidence from James Webb Space Telescope Cycle 1-3 general observer programs","authors":"Christopher Williams","doi":"10.1016/j.respol.2025.105239","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.respol.2025.105239","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study explores the determinants of allocated time on large, complex scientific platforms, with a focus on astronomy and the competition for scientific use of space telescopes. Time allocation has become part of an intense competitive landscape for researchers vying for use of these assets once they are launched and calibrated. Extant research on determinants of time allocation in this context is mixed and scholars have portrayed astronomy as a moral economy, with issues of fairness – including gender equality - and openness at stake. Analysis of data from the first three Cycles of accepted programs on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) using multivariable modelling shows allocated time to be consistently linked to size of the investigator team and whether the investigators waived exclusivity. The relationship between principal investigator (PI) gender and allocated time is found to vary over the three Cycles, as well as by program size and distance categories. PI affiliation and team geographic diversity have no consistent relationship with allocated time in regression tests although geographic diversity is correlated with team size. Findings are discussed against the backdrop of a moral economy in astronomy and the salience of issues relating to equality, diversity, and openness in scientific competition for large-scale research assets.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48466,"journal":{"name":"Research Policy","volume":"54 5","pages":"Article 105239"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2025-04-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143785821","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

When citizens judge science: Crowd evaluations in Mode 2 knowledge production

IF 7.5 1区管理学

Research Policy Pub Date : 2025-04-07 DOI: 10.1016/j.respol.2025.105214

Chiara Franzoni , Henry Sauermann , Diletta Di Marco

{"title":"When citizens judge science: Crowd evaluations in Mode 2 knowledge production","authors":"Chiara Franzoni , Henry Sauermann , Diletta Di Marco","doi":"10.1016/j.respol.2025.105214","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.respol.2025.105214","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Emerging crowdsourcing and crowdfunding mechanisms enable citizens to decide which research projects should be funded. By transferring control from professional scientists, these mechanisms reflect a broader shift towards more open “Mode 2” knowledge production that allows non-academic stakeholders to shape the direction of science. Although this may lead to a greater emphasis on the social impact of research, there is no systematic evidence on how crowd evaluators weigh social impact relative to other criteria such as scientific merit or team qualifications. There are also concerns that the personal financial costs associated with crowdfunding prevent certain socio-economic groups from participating, reducing the representativeness of opinions. Similarly, it is not clear what role citizens’ personal interest in particular topics plays in shaping their evaluations. We provide empirical evidence using data from over 2,300 crowd evaluators who assessed four research proposals in different fields and could express their support using a crowdsourcing mechanism (i.e., recommendation) and a crowdfunding mechanism (i.e., donation of own money). We confirm that crowd evaluators give significant weight to perceived social impact, although this weight is not larger than that of scientific merit. Compared to crowdsourcing, crowdfunding gives greater voice to citizens with higher income and education. Personal interest in a topic tends to be associated with greater project support, which may partly reflect an inflated assessment of social impact. Despite these general patterns, we also observe differences across projects – illustrating context-specificity and variability that make open Mode 2 processes difficult to predict and control.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48466,"journal":{"name":"Research Policy","volume":"54 5","pages":"Article 105214"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2025-04-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143785822","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Benefits beyond the local network: Does indirect international collaboration ties contribute to research performance for young scientists?

IF 7.5 1区管理学

Research Policy Pub Date : 2025-03-25 DOI: 10.1016/j.respol.2025.105233

Kaihua Chen , Yi Ding , Binbin Zhao , Rui Guo , Lutao Ning

{"title":"Benefits beyond the local network: Does indirect international collaboration ties contribute to research performance for young scientists?","authors":"Kaihua Chen , Yi Ding , Binbin Zhao , Rui Guo , Lutao Ning","doi":"10.1016/j.respol.2025.105233","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.respol.2025.105233","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study examines how the research performance of young scientists is influenced by indirect international collaboration ties formed through domestic collaborators with transnational academic connections. Based on a comprehensive dataset of 8,341,013 young scientists worldwide from the Scopus database covering 2000–2020, we employ a variety of methods to confirm that young scientists with a higher density of indirect international collaboration ties achieve significantly greater research productivity and prominence. Facilitating international knowledge spillover and nurturing new collaboration ties beyond local networks are important mechanisms through which indirect international collaboration ties exert positive impacts. Moreover, the positive effect of indirect international collaboration ties is enhanced when young scientists share sufficient cognitive proximity with foreign partners amongst their domestic collaborators. The impact of indirect international collaboration ties also shows significant heterogeneity, with particular benefits observed for natural scientists, males, and scientists from underdeveloped countries. These results underscore that transnational academic connections held by domestic collaborators constitute a vital form of academic social capital, facilitating the integration of young scientists into global academic networks and consequently enhancing their research performance.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48466,"journal":{"name":"Research Policy","volume":"54 5","pages":"Article 105233"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2025-03-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143696033","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Concept and creativity: Proof-of-concept demonstration and aviation innovation in the United States, 1894–1913

IF 7.5 1区管理学

Research Policy Pub Date : 2025-03-21 DOI: 10.1016/j.respol.2025.105230

Daniel B. Sands , Eunhee Sohn , Robert Seamans

{"title":"Concept and creativity: Proof-of-concept demonstration and aviation innovation in the United States, 1894–1913","authors":"Daniel B. Sands , Eunhee Sohn , Robert Seamans","doi":"10.1016/j.respol.2025.105230","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.respol.2025.105230","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This article conceptualizes proof-of-concept demonstration as the public display of a functioning new technology and investigates its effect on technological progress and industry emergence within the context of aviation in the United States between 1894 and 1913. The first successful demonstration of powered flight marked a watershed moment in the development of aviation and provided a proof-of-concept event that would dramatically change the trajectory and locus of flight-focused innovation. Our historical case study of these dynamics indicates that there was a dramatic increase in the amount of aviation patenting following successful public demonstrations of the airplane. We find that the geographic locus of aviation innovation in the United States shifted starting in 1908, the year in which the Wright brothers first publicly demonstrated their early aircraft. After this event, aviation patenting increased most significantly in areas that were geographically near to the demonstration site and in areas with high pre-existing levels of innovative activity. We observe that inventors placed greater focus on new elements of airplanes related to the proof-of-concept design, and we also find an increase in patenting of alternative types of flying devices that were conceptually and technologically distinct from the demonstrated fixed-wing airplane. Ultimately, this work links micro- and macro-levels of analysis and perspectives to provide a comprehensive account of the creative processes that underpin technological advance, and it contributes to our understanding of the incubation stage of industry emergence around new technologies.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48466,"journal":{"name":"Research Policy","volume":"54 5","pages":"Article 105230"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2025-03-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143681100","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

The effect of trainee career intentions on mentor's interest in the trainee: Experimental evidence from academia

IF 7.5 1区管理学

Research Policy Pub Date : 2025-03-20 DOI: 10.1016/j.respol.2025.105232

Inna Smirnova , Austin Shannon , Misha Teplitskiy

{"title":"The effect of trainee career intentions on mentor's interest in the trainee: Experimental evidence from academia","authors":"Inna Smirnova , Austin Shannon , Misha Teplitskiy","doi":"10.1016/j.respol.2025.105232","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.respol.2025.105232","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In many industries trainees often seek careers different from their mentors. For example, many PhD students seek non-academic careers. Anecdotally, mentors invest less in different-career trainees, but causal evidence is lacking. To fill this gap, we conducted an audit experiment in academia, where a fictitious prospective PhD student emailed immunology and microbiology principal investigators (PIs) about mentorship. The student's career intention was randomly described as “applied research in industry” (<em>n</em> = 1000), “basic research in academia” (n = 1000) or no description (control, <em>n</em> = 442). To mitigate concerns about skills and motivation, all emails highlighted the student's great academic record. Contrary to expectations, PIs responded at similar rates across all conditions. Treatment effects showed little heterogeneity based on the PIs' institution prestige, industry connections, and career length. These null findings challenge the widespread belief that mismatched career intentions <em>cause</em> less mentorship (although the two may still be associated) and the mechanisms assumed to drive that effect. Our results call for caution in deploying interventions to fix problems related to advisor-mentee misalignments before clearly establishing their source.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48466,"journal":{"name":"Research Policy","volume":"54 5","pages":"Article 105232"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2025-03-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143681101","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Looking under the hood—How incumbent characteristics reduce the innovation impact of trajectory-changing demand-pull policy mixes for battery electric vehicles

IF 7.5 1区管理学

Research Policy Pub Date : 2025-03-10 DOI: 10.1016/j.respol.2025.105212

Hauke Luetkehaus

{"title":"Looking under the hood—How incumbent characteristics reduce the innovation impact of trajectory-changing demand-pull policy mixes for battery electric vehicles","authors":"Hauke Luetkehaus","doi":"10.1016/j.respol.2025.105212","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.respol.2025.105212","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Policymakers increasingly implement trajectory-changing demand-pull policies that support the emergence of technologies outside old innovation trajectories. While previous studies provide important insights into how such demand-pull policies drive innovation, we lack a detailed understanding of the role of incumbents' heterogeneity. Understanding the determinants of incumbents' responses to trajectory-changing demand-pull policy mixes is valuable, as these firms might hinder but also enable sustainability transitions. We introduce the idea of demand-pull policy mixes and then investigate how incumbents' characteristics shape the impact of demand-pull policy mixes on incumbents' innovation activity. Building on the literature on incumbent adaptation, we find empirical evidence that incumbents' technological capabilities, firm performance, and commitment to old technology can inhibit the impact of trajectory-changing demand-pull policy mixes on their innovation activity. This highlights that policy impacts depend on incumbents' heterogeneity and, thus, on the incumbent firm population within a country. In addition, the effectiveness of trajectory-changing demand-pull policy mixes may be enhanced by the use of phase-out and technology-push policies. However, some policies that are considered destabilizing for old technologies may be less effective than assumed in changing innovation trajectories. Moreover, our findings suggest that characteristics that inhibit incumbents' adaptation to technological change in general, such as commitments to old technology, also constrain their responsiveness to trajectory-changing demand-pull policy mixes. Thus, incumbents that experience the greatest inertia to adapt—and hence are most in need of external incentives—are also the least responsive to incentives, such that they are at risk of being caught in a double trap.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48466,"journal":{"name":"Research Policy","volume":"54 5","pages":"Article 105212"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2025-03-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143580576","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Understanding individual-level drivers of disruptive innovations: The role of founder's social identity

IF 7.5 1区管理学

Research Policy Pub Date : 2025-03-10 DOI: 10.1016/j.respol.2025.105215

Denise Fischer-Kreer , Andrea Greven , Mareike Grimm , Malte Brettel

{"title":"Understanding individual-level drivers of disruptive innovations: The role of founder's social identity","authors":"Denise Fischer-Kreer , Andrea Greven , Mareike Grimm , Malte Brettel","doi":"10.1016/j.respol.2025.105215","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.respol.2025.105215","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This article adopts a social identity perspective to demonstrate that a founder's identity orientations are key individual-level drivers of disruptive innovation. We introduce the three identity type orientations—a founder's Darwinian, Communitarian, or Missionary identity orientation—and propose they play a distinct role in shaping the disruptiveness of new venture innovations. We examined our predictions with survey data from 215 ventures obtained in two waves from a first and second key informant from the venture's founding team. Our results reveal that a founder's Darwinian identity orientation, unlike hypothesized, has a positive effect on disruptive innovations. We find that a founder's Communitarian identity orientation has no significant effect on disruptive innovations, whereas a founder's Missionary identity orientation has a significant positive one. Our study advances research by viewing the individual drivers of disruptive innovation in the context of new ventures instead of incumbents, which most studies explore. Our findings have important implications for the identity–innovation nexus and underscore the relevance of founders' social categorization for disruptive innovations.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48466,"journal":{"name":"Research Policy","volume":"54 5","pages":"Article 105215"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2025-03-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143580577","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Women advocates and men critics: How referees' gender influences candidates' likelihood of receiving a promotion

IF 7.5 1区管理学

Research Policy Pub Date : 2025-03-09 DOI: 10.1016/j.respol.2025.105217

Theodore Masters-Waage , Juan M. Madera , Ally St. Aubin , Joshua Ash , Ebenezer Edema-Sillo , Christiane Spitzmueller

{"title":"Women advocates and men critics: How referees' gender influences candidates' likelihood of receiving a promotion","authors":"Theodore Masters-Waage , Juan M. Madera , Ally St. Aubin , Joshua Ash , Ebenezer Edema-Sillo , Christiane Spitzmueller","doi":"10.1016/j.respol.2025.105217","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.respol.2025.105217","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>External review letters (ERLs) play a critical role in the promotion and tenure (P&T) process. However, recently, scholars have questioned their validity, given the strong relationships between letter writer characteristics and letter content. Building on Madera et al. (2024), we develop a social role-based theory of how letter writer gender affects letter content and voting outcomes. Results from within-candidate analysis find gender differences in letters written for the same candidate, 1) men letter writers used more personal pronouns (I/me/myself) and women used more other-pronouns (she/he), 2) letters written by women - compared to men - had a more positive tone overall, and 3) used less doubt language. Collectively, this suggests that women write more supportive and candidate-focused letters than men in the P&T process. Confirming this, we find that - controlling for school, discipline, scholarly productivity, and demographics - candidates with a higher proportion of women letter writers (i.e., lower proportion of men) have more positive P&T outcomes. These findings underscore the need for P&T reforms to improve equity in the external review letter-writing and writer selection process.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48466,"journal":{"name":"Research Policy","volume":"54 5","pages":"Article 105217"},"PeriodicalIF":7.5,"publicationDate":"2025-03-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143580574","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0