Institutional convergence and the diffusion of university- versus firm-origin technologies.

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Building on inter-organizational networks of innovation, scholars have begun to examine various types of organizations within these networks and have offered special attention to the role of universities. Typically, these studies link the university as an organizational type with the institution of "public science," which emphasizes the open disclosure of knowledge, and the firm with the institution of "private science," which emphasizes the commercial exploitation of knowledge.
In light of dramatic shifts in the commercial orientation of universities, I argue that the distinction between organizations on the presumption that they subscribe to different institutional norms of disclosure no longer holds. To investigate this possibility, I compare diffusion patterns for paired technologies---one with a university origin and one with a firm origin---in both biotechnology and digital audio. Each invention was both published and patented, reflecting the dual emphasis on public science and private science. I draw upon downstream patent and publication citations to assess potential differences in the speed of diffusion, the geographic locations of follow-on organizations and the breadth of applications as indicated by patent classes and subclasses. I also exploit interviews with 112 different researchers and business managers to identify diffusion mechanisms and the considerations that affect their use.
Confirming the eroding association of organizational and institutional arrangements, I find that a technology's organizational origin alone offers little insight into diffusion processes. Instead, I highlight diffusion mechanisms that hold across organizational contexts and I describe how these mechanisms build upon interpersonal networks. Ultimately, these interpersonal networks, which feature rampant crossing of organizational boundaries, are the critical structures that enable the diffusion of knowledge. Moreover, these connections shape how individual researchers in each organizational context respond to the competing demands of public science and private science. These results highlight institutional diffusion processes responsible for the movement of knowledge between organizations---both from the university to the firm and from the firm to the university. In so doing, they develop a richer understanding of university-firm interactions, encourage further study of the personal networks of researchers, and question the adequacy of accounts that are focused on organizational distinctions alone.