Exploring the flow of publicly-funded research into commercialised inventions

2022 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 21K13360
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Early-Career Scientists
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Review Section: Basic Section 07080:Business administration-related
• Research Institution: Hitotsubashi University
• Principal Investigator: HIGHAM Kyle 一橋大学, 大学院経営管理研究科, 特任助教 (00886666)
• Project Period (FY): 2021-04-01 – 2023-03-31
• Keywords: Innovation / Patents / Commercialisation / Science / Citations

Outline of Final Research Achievements

In this project, we employ a case-control methodology to explore the pathway from scientific research to commercialisation. We used Virtual Patent Marks (VPMs) and patent citation data to trace the path from scientific research to marketplace.
Findings reveal that patents further removed from their originating scientific citation were more likely to be commercialized. However, once we condition on a direct link to past scientific research, older scientific work was found to be positively associated with commercialisation but negatively associated with a patent's citation-based impact. These findings are in disagreement with traditional analyses of the link between an invention's impact and its scientific antecedents, and stand up to several robustness checks.
These results shed new light on the complex relationship between public science, patent creation, and commercial success, significantly impacting how we understand utilisation of public scientific research by innovators.

Free Research Field

Innovation

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

We traced how public science becomes real-world products. Surprisingly, inventions farther from original research often become successful products. Older science often aids commercialisation, suggesting that science's societal impact can be a slow burn, but no less significant.