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

Recent studies have found that the overall US industrial base relies heavil y on public science, i.e., knowledge that originates from universities, res earch institutions, government laboratories, etc. This research effort narr ows the focus to examine the public science linkage for an important, relat ively new industry: biotechnology. Our results indicate that the biotechnol ogy industry depends on public science much more heavily than other industr ies. In addition, we found that biotechnology companies rely on public scie nce for very basic scientific research, that there is a strong national bia s in the citation patterns, and that biotechnology firms rely on science to a much greater extent than large, diversified pharmaceutical companies do. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.