An analysis of the critical role of public science in innovation: the case of biotechnology

Recent studies have found that the overall US industrial base relies heavily on public science, i.e., knowledge that originates from universities, research institutions, government laboratories, etc. This research effort narrows the focus to examine the public science linkage for an important, relatively new industry: biotechnology. Our results indicate that the biotechnology industry depends on public science much more heavily than other industries. In addition, we found that biotechnology companies rely on public science for very basic scientific research, that there is a strong national bias in the citation patterns, and that biotechnology firms rely on science to a much greater extent than large, diversified pharmaceutical companies do.