Abstract: Is it the prominent scientist who becomes an inventor? A matching of Swedish academic paris in nanoscience to examine the effects of publishing on patenting.
Nanoscience is an interdisciplinary field, in which science, in terms of publications, and technology, in terms of inventions, are closely related. Sweden represents an interesting setting to examine how they are related because a high proportion of the total Swedish academic patents can be classified as nanoscience. Combining bibliometric data from the Web of Science, patent data from EPO and data from Swedish universities, this paper identifies all authors and all inventors listed on patents who work at universities in Sweden within nanotechnology. The main question we address is whether or not prominent academic scientists in terms of scientific publications are also the ones who become academic inventors. The paper uses a semi-parametric technique, namely a conditional regression in a matched sample, in order to isolate the effect of publishing on patenting. One novelty of this paper is that it applies a conditional logistic regression in matched pairs of academics, in order to isolate the relationship between patenting and publishing in nanoscience. The empirical results show that academics who both publish and patent have, on average, more publications as well as more citations. Furthermore, having a higher number of citations can increase the probability of having a patent. Interdisciplinarity is also positively correlated with patenting. Thus, by isolating the effects of publishing on patenting, this paper demonstrates that scientific prominence, indicated both by the number of articles and citations, positively impacts the propensity to take patents.
Social innovations are here defined as a quasi-public good, involving collective action by multiple stakeholders. This type of quasi-public good in fact provides a service, which involves co-delivery of the social innovation, based upon the development of multiple network and partner relationships. In explaining what social innovation is and how they are delivered, much existing research focuses upon the role of NGOs and community based collective action. This article starts from the observation that universities can play different roles in social innovation, and then focuses on how to explain theoretically how and why the university is an intermediary in providing this quasi-public good. This is a role, which has been neglected in recent decades with the emphasis upon commercialization, e.g. patents and start-up companies. This article uses this insight, in order to propose a conceptual framework, to understand how and why the university can organize the co-delivery of social innovations through education. The conceptual framework is then illustrated with a case study, leading to propositions for later research.