Knowledge Transfer Flows in the Life Science Communities: Conceptual Model Development and Empirical Examination by Ani Gerbin and Mateja Drnovsek ___________________________

In this paper we expand the existing research on knowledge transfer from academia to the business sector in life sciences. We develop a comprehensive individual-level conceptual model in which we distinguish between the “traditional” and the “new-type” knowledge transfer activities in assessing their role in formal and informal sharing of scientific knowledge. We provide a broad perspective on knowledge flows, by considering both the individual and environmental determinants of different forms of collaborative efforts among researchers. The study contributes to the ongoing debates on the impact of commercial considerations at academic institutions on adherence to the norms of open science. ___________________________

Introduction The global upsurge of knowledge transfer activities from academic and other non-profit research institutions to the business sector was initiated in the USA through the adoption of the Public Law 96-517, Patent and Trademark Amendments of 1980, also known as the Bayh-Dole Act. The Bayh-Dole Act gave non-profit institutions and small businesses the privilege to retain the property rights to inventions deriving from the state-funded research. This law, as well as the increased reliance of business firms on university research and development, enabled the expansion of universities’ traditional mission of teaching and research towards a “third academic mission”, the transfer of university technology to industry (Kruecken 2003). _____________________ Ani Gerbin is a doctoral student at the University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Economics, Ljubljana, Slovenia, and Finance Associate at the University of Rijeka, Faculty of Medicine, Center for Proteomics, Rijeka, Croatia. Mateja Drnovsek, PhD, is Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship at the University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Economics, Ljubljana, Slovenia. Address correspondence to: Ani Gerbin, University of Rijeka Faculty of Medicine, Center for Proteomics, B. Branchetta 20, 51000 Rijeka, Croatia. E-mail: [email protected].

Prior literature on knowledge transfer examined how links between academia and industry enable the expansion of basic research funding sources and help remove the borderline between basic and applied research (Czarnitzki, et al. 2009). Other scholars explored how engagement of researchers in knowledge transfer activities could undermine their commitment to the norms of open science, in that way leading to secrecy and publication delays (Dasgupta, and David 1994; Geuna, and Nesta 2006). The most often examined challenges of the Bayh-Dole Act include: threat to scientific progress due to increasing disclosure restrictions; declining patents’ and publications’ quality, biasing research efforts toward commercial priorities, crowding-out between patents and publications and reducing the quality of teaching activity in academia (Baldini 2008). These issues have been examined on the individual and institutional levels of analysis, taking into account either the academic or the industry perspective (Boardman, and Ponomariov 2009). Recently the level of analysis shifted to an individual’s perspective to fully capture the predictors, characteristics and effects of knowledge transfer process, particularly in relation to scientific knowledge diffusion (Breschi, and Catalini 2010). Drawing from this body of literature we identified several gaps. First, empirical studies have for the most part dealt with the impact of patenting on the open science environment, without paying specific attention to other knowledge transfer activities (Heller, and Eisenberg 1998; Murray, and Stern 2007). Second, the studies that did consider the impact of different forms of knowledge transfer on knowledge flows among researchers have mostly examined only one aspect of knowledge diffusion - informal cooperation between researchers (Blumenthal, et al. 1997; Campbell, et al. 2000; Walsh, et al. 2007). Third, the empirical findings with reference to formal knowledge flows have typically been restricted to investigations of the relationship between knowledge transfer and quantity and quality of the researchers’ scientific output (Agrawal, and Henderson 2002; Van Looy, et al. 2006; Fabrizio, and Di Minin 2008). Thus, only few studies attempted so far to consider the determinants of other forms of formal collaboration among researchers, such are collaborative

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research projects or personnel exchange between laboratories. Finally, the conducted empirical analyses have often produced ambiguous findings, consequently leaving the question on the nature of the relationship between knowledge transfer activities and knowledge flows in the scientific community unanswered. In this study we first seek to provide a broad perspective on knowledge flows in the life science community, by considering both the individual and the environmental determinants of different forms of collaborative efforts among researchers. Second, we plan to extend the work of other scholars that discuss the conflicts between the norms of free circulation of knowledge and the rules of market competition (Calderini, et al. 2007), which emerged in parallel with the expansion of patenting to the life sciences. Specifically, our research aims to investigate a wide range of knowledge transfer activities from academia to industry in assessing their role in the diffusion of formal and informal scientific knowledge. By separately evaluating different forms of knowledge transfer we intend to account for their diverse characteristics and consequently, their potentially diverse impact on knowledge flows. Moreover, we suggest that it is possible to draw generalized conclusions regarding the actual extent of impact of knowledge transfer process on knowledge flows in the life sciences only by considering a full spectrum of available knowledge transfer activities on one side, and a variety of knowledge flows among researchers on the other. In so doing we propose a comprehensive conceptual model of knowledge transfer process from the perspective of an individual researcher. This model and the related key propositions will capture the relationship between particular forms of knowledge transfer activities and particular forms of dissemination of research inputs and research results among researchers. The propositions will be empirically tested by combining personal interviews with researchers and questionnaire surveys (the latter are not discussed in this paper). Based on our findings we will estimate whether the present concerns of scholars and policy makers over increasing secrecy in biomedicine and biotechnology fields have been targeting the factual cause of problems.

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Literature Review A large portion of the articles published in the field focused on the impact of patenting, as one form of knowledge transfer, on knowledge diffusion among researchers. On the positive side, patenting is viewed as a means of providing investment incentives in the life sciences, which are vital due to long product development time horizons and high associated risks. However, the expansion of proprietary interests to life sciences is also assumed to have the strongest influence on endangering free knowledge flows among academic researchers. It seems that patenting and exclusive licensing of upstream, basic discoveries with broad application in the life sciences could in fact restrict future innovation, by increasing costs and hindering the access to technologies and the free flow of scientific knowledge needed for subsequent research and even redirecting the research (Rai, and Eisenberg 2003; Campbell, et al. 2004). This concern has been captured in the phrase “the tragedy of the anticommons”, which has been used extensively to point to the problem of existence of multiple holders of rights to separately patentable inputs which combined from one product or resource (Heller, and Eisenberg 1998; Walsh, et al. 2003). In a qualitative study of the impact of patenting of research tools in biomedicine on innovation, Walsh and colleagues (2003) find that university research has not been substantially impeded by an increase in patenting; with an exception of patented genetic diagnostics. Relying on the analysis of citation rates of scientific publications before and after the grant of associated patents, Murray and Stern (2007) test the anti-commons hypothesis and find a modest evidence of the restrictive impact of patents on knowledge diffusion. Furthermore, based on a survey of Canadian stem cell researchers, Caulfield and colleagues (2008) show that even though about one half of researchers view patents negatively in terms of their impact on research environment by increasing secrecy, there is little evidence that patenting in reality interferes with the research process through increased withholding of protected materials. Academic competitiveness, and not patents, is viewed as a principal reason for the denials of requests for materials. Davis and colleagues (2011) confirm

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the skepticism of life scientists regarding the impact of university patenting on academic research and the norms of open science. Overall, these studies point to existence of data and materials withholding among researchers. Moreover, they show evidence of negative attitudes of researchers toward the impact of patenting on knowledge sharing. However, it is also observable that patenting alone may not be sufficient to explain the limitations in knowledge diffusion among researchers in the life science field. Only a limited number of studies have considered the heterogeneity in university-industry interactions when assessing their relationship with knowledge diffusion. When it comes to involvement in commercialization of university-based research, it is shown to be significantly associated with increased likelihood of data withholding (confirmed by Blumenthal, et al. 1996; Louis, et al. 2001; Campbell, et al. 2002; Walsh, et al. 2007). In a study aimed to reveal the reasons behind two forms of data withholding, publication delays and refusals to share biomaterials and data, Blumenthal and colleagues (1997) find that involvement in academic-industry research relationship and engagement in the commercialization of university research are both associated with publication delays, whereas only the latter is associated with refusal to share research results upon request. A more recent study of geneticists and other life scientists (Blumenthal, et al. 2006) shows that not only industry research support and commercialization endeavors, but also other industry involvements, such as consulting or equity, have an adverse effect on verbal or publishing data sharing in life sciences. Going in the same direction but in the context of scientific norms, Shibayama (2011) on a sample of Japanese natural scientists finds that not all entrepreneurial activities discourage cooperative relationships between scientists: while commercial activity facilitates secretive publications and non-compliant behaviors in material transfer, no significant effects are shown for collaboration with industry and funding from industry. These findings are particularly interesting because they point to the need for distinguishing between particular forms of knowledge transfer in investigating their impact on knowledge flows in the life science communities.

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Thus, some authors report modest or no evidence of increasing restrictions in knowledge diffusion due to involvement of researchers in knowledge transfer activities. Instead, they attribute the limitations in knowledge flows to reasons such as academic competition, resource constraints or logistical difficulties (see also Blumenthal, et al. 1997; Louis, et al. 2002; Walsh, et al. 2007). On the other hand, others point to significant limitations in sharing resulting from knowledge transfer activities. Next, the published articles only to a certain extent take into account other forms of knowledge transfer in addition to patenting. Moreover, informal knowledge flows, such as sharing of materials and data, are mostly in the focus of attention of such studies; the empirical findings with reference to formal knowledge flows have been poorly represented in the literature (Rodriguez, et al. 2007; Haeussler, et al. 2010). Existing gaps could be addressed by integrating the effects of involvement of researchers in different forms of knowledge transfer with the industry on particular forms of knowledge flows among researchers in one theoretical model. This approach arises from the assumption that the lack of consideration of diversity of knowledge transfer activities or concentration on only one aspect of knowledge diffusion obscures drawing general conclusions regarding the real scope of impact of knowledge transfer on knowledge flows.

Theory and Hypotheses Knowledge transfer activities may take various forms. In this paper we categorize knowledge transfer activities from the academia to the business sector in two distinct groups. We separately analyze the impact on knowledge flows of (1) “traditional” knowledge transfer activities, which are contingent on industrial funding of researchers and research institutions, such as consulting, sponsored research or university-industry joint research projects, and (2) “new-type” knowledge transfer activities, which erect from the value of intellectual property rights, including patenting, licensing and the creation of spin-off companies (Nowotny, et al. 2003; Gulbrandsen, and Smeby 2005).

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When discussing the knowledge diffusion pathways between members of the scientific community, we recognize that informal collaboration, in the form of exchange of research information and research materials, is as important for the continued existence of the open science paradigm in academia as formal collaboration, due to “invisible colleges, small cooperative networks of information sharing with a high relevance of informal linkages, which traditionally overcome boundaries of public research” (Dasgupta, and David 1994; Etzkowitz 2003). Formal collaboration can be realized through joint research projects, personnel exchange, co-authorships on publications and dissemination of results in scientific journals, books and at professional conferences. In order to achieve our key research objective - to investigate how the involvement of researchers in different forms of knowledge transfer with the industry influences knowledge diffusion in the life sciences, we therefore make a distinction between formal and informal knowledge flows among researchers.

“Traditional” Knowledge Transfer Activities as Determinants of Knowledge Flows Government funding of research has been declining during the last two decades. This change has forced the researchers to diversify the sources of their finance, either through applying for competitive supranational funds (for example, European Commission’s) or by chasing different sources of funding of industrial origin (Gulbrandsen, and Smeby 2005; Geuna, and Nesta 2006). Different forms of university–industry collaboration have increased in magnitude also due to the emergence of the biotechnology industry, which relied heavily on the expertise and social capital of basic academic researchers (Murray 2004; Colyvas 2007; Jong 2008). These may include collaborative research projects, sponsored research, consulting, equity holding in companies, personnel exchange, joint supervision of PhD students or joint publishing (see Blumenthal, et al. 1996; Davis, and Lotz 2006; Gaughan, and Corley 2010) and can be called “traditional” knowledge transfer activities (adapted from Nowotny, et al. 2003) as the consideration of intellectual property rights, although possible, is not of primary concern.

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“Traditional” Knowledge Transfer Activities and Formal Knowledge Flows. This research focuses on publication contents and timing dimensions of formal knowledge diffusion in scientific journals. Shibayama (2011) shows that collaboration with industry and funding from industry has no significant effect on secretive publications or intentional exclusion of information from a publication. On the other hand, Blumenthal, and colleagues (2006) show that involvement in various forms of research relationships with industry, such as consulting, industry funding, or equity holding in companies, is associated with publishing data sharing restrictions or publication delays. Limited evidence exists regarding the determinants of other formal knowledge flows between researchers, such as joint research projects, joint publications, personnel exchange or dissemination of research results at scientific conferences. Haeussler, and colleagues (2010) find that consulting is negatively related to general sharing, such as dissemination of findings at scientific conferences as well as publishing timing. Davis and colleagues (2011) show that the award of an industry research grant is significantly and positively associated with the likelihood that the scientist would be skeptical about the impact of academic patenting on the norms of open science. On the other hand, they find no effect of collaboration in joint research projects with industry. In a different study, based on survey data of all tenured university professors in Norway, Gulbrandsen, and Smeby (2005) find that there is a significant and positive relationship between industry funding and frequency of regular research collaboration with other scientists both in academia and in industry. However, they do not distinguish between the formal and informal type of collaboration. All in all, there is a considerable amount of previous findings showing that academia-industry relationships have to a certain extent adversely influenced the adherence of researchers to the norms of open science with respect to formal knowledge diffusion. This leads us to argue:

Proposition 1 The extent of an academic researcher’s involvement in “traditional” knowledge transfer activities will be negatively related to the extent s(he) formally collaborates with members of the scientific community.

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“Traditional” Knowledge Transfer Activities and Informal Knowledge Flows. Concerning the impact of “traditional” knowledge transfer activities on informal knowledge flows, the evidence is more straightforward. In general, biomedical researchers with connections to industry seem to be more likely to engage in data and materials withholding than their colleagues without such connections (Blumenthal, et al. (1996, 1997, 2006); Campbell, et al., (2000, 2002); Caulfied, and Ogbogu (2008); Louis, et al. (2002); Vogeli, et al. (2006)). Hong, and Walsh (2009) obtain diverse results when assessing the impact of industry-related activity of mathematicians, physicists and experimental biologists on secrecy with respect to discussing ongoing research with other researchers: industry funding is related to greater secrecy, while having industry collaborators is associated with less secrecy. This hypothesis however, is confirmed only for the overall sample, whereas none of the industry-related activities is shown to have a significant impact on secrecy in the experimental biology community (see also Walsh, et al. 2007; Shibayama 2011). We propose:

Proposition 2 The extent of an academic researcher’s involvement in “traditional” knowledge transfer activities will be negatively related to the extent s(he) informally collaborates with members of the scientific community.

“New-type” Knowledge Transfer Activities as Determinants of Knowledge Flows “New-type” knowledge transfer activities have its focus in the value of intellectual property rights, although there are many historical examples of consideration of commercial value of knowledge generated from non-profit organizations’ research (Nowotny, et al. 2003; Gulbrandsen, and Smeby 2005). The expansion of proprietary interests to a broader range of scientific findings in the life sciences and biotechnology as well as to new parties, academic and other non-profit institutions, created various new opportunities for scientific development (Colyvas 2007) with the help of activities such are patenting, licensing, spin-off companies founding and marketing of new products and services generated through the use of academic-based resources.

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“New-type” Knowledge Transfer Activities and Formal Knowledge Flows. Formal knowledge flows between researchers in the form of dissemination of findings in scientific journals have several dimensions: number of publications, quality of publications, publishing timing as well as publication content. In this research timing and contents of scientific papers dimensions of publishing knowledge flows are considered. Forti and colleagues (2007) confirm that academic inventors have larger and more complex paper co-authorship networks than faculty that never filed a patent. In a different analysis, Blumenthal and colleagues (1997, 2006) show that university research commercialization endeavors are associated with publication delays, whereas Shibayama (2010, 2011) finds that commercial activity facilitates secretive publications. Oliver (2004) shows that patenting has a low negative effect on the extent of academic and international cooperation, without specifying the type of cooperation in question. Finally, Haeussler and colleagues (2010) confirm a negative relationship between the number and importance of patents and general sharing among academic researchers, in the shape of conference presentations to the broader community or publishing timing. Despite limited and often disagreeing evidence with respect to the impact of commercialization on other formal collaboration forms, such as personnel exchange or collaborative research projects, we propose: Proposition 3 The extent of an academic researcher’s involvement in “new-type” knowledge transfer activities will be negatively related to the extent s(he) formally collaborates with members of the scientific community.

“New-type” Knowledge Transfer Activities and Informal Knowledge Flows. A few empirical studies focus on different forms of commercialization activity: while some authors assess merely the impact of patenting (Haeussler, et al. 2010), others include a range of business activities, from invention disclosing and licensing, to business planning, spinning-off or product placing on the market (Campbell, et al. 2000; Louis, et al. 2001; Campbell, et al. 2002; Blumenthal, et al. 2006; Walsh, et al. 2007; Shibayama 2010; Shibayama 2011). In practically all examined cases the authors

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reach consensus with respect to the adverse impact of commercialization activities on research materials and information sharing between researchers. Based on this rationale we hypothesize that:

Proposition 4 The extent of an academic researcher’s involvement in “new-type” knowledge transfer activities will be negatively related to the extent s(he) informally collaborates with members of the scientific community.

In addition to the four key propositions, we present some arguments in relation to human and social capital as well as institutional and environmental determinants of knowledge sharing.

Human and Social Capital Determinants of Knowledge Flows Professional Age and Knowledge Flows. We argue that the greater the professional experience of scientists, the more intensive is the extent of both formal and informal collaboration with their colleague researchers. Scientists with more professional experience will be more deeply embedded into international scientific networks and thus less likely to experience non-compliant behaviors regarding sharing from both the supply and the demand side (Campbell, et al. 2000). At the same time, the possibility of encountering problems or restrictions with different dimensions of formal and informal cooperation is greater for younger researchers, who had less time to develop a network of professional contacts and build their intellectual and social capital and thus have lower recognition in the scientific community. However, recent changes in the intellectual property regime and the resulting orientation toward entrepreneurial universities might affect the attitudes of younger researchers, usually more prone to changes, regarding the norms of open science. On the other hand, one can also argue that older researchers may have less motivation to unconditionally contribute to the scientific community (Shibayama 2011) as well as be more susceptible to various “games” in sharing practices, moderated by scientific competition. Academic Rank and Knowledge Flows. Academic rank and tenure status are often used as substitutes to predict the extent of knowledge diffusion from individual researchers to the scientific

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community. Our assumption is that the higher up a researcher is on the academic ladder, the larger the professional experience and the better the sign that one has shown capacity to attract resources and a broader and deeper range of both formal and informal collaborative and disseminative endeavors. Previous studies have mostly found no significant effect of academic rank on formal knowledge sharing (Haeussler, et al. 2010; Shibayama 2010; Shibayama 2011). Yet, Blumenthal and colleagues (1997) find that higher academic rank is associated with publication delays. Since these studies produced mixed results and only partially examined different formal knowledge diffusion forms, we recognize the need for further empirical studies, which will take into account a wider range of components of formal collaboration between researchers. Previous studies examining the association between academic rank and informal knowledge sharing have also produced mixed results. While some studies indicate that untenured faculty is less likely to share materials and data than tenured faculty (Haeussler, et al. 2010), other studies find no significant associations between research results or materials sharing restrictions and respondents' academic rank (Blumenthal, et al. 1997; Campbell, et al. 2000; Louis, et al. 2001). In contrast, Shibayama (2011) finds that full professors are more likely than associate professors to deny material transfer to colleague researchers. We explain this conflicting evidence by considering the differences in sample sizes, scientific fields examined and cultural settings in each of these studies. Scientific Values and Knowledge Flows. Scientific openness or unimpeded access to research results (Merton 1973) have been traditionally considered to be the most important norms of the scientists’ profession. The outcomes of academic prestige such as publications, citations and peer status emerge from adherence to this system. Merton observed more than 40 years ago that “the communism of the scientific ethos is abstractly incompatible with the definition of technology as ‘private property’ in a capitalistic economy.” Evidently, the attitude of the majority of scientists towards commercial involvement has in the meantime changed, that is, evolved from resistance to compliance to acceptance, primarily thanks to the departmental and institutional norms and policies,

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such as academic workload reduction and part-time appointments. Yet, a significant concern, perceived as an obstacle, has remained present with some researchers concerning the delay and secrecy in the dissemination of results and possible interference with academic pursuits and freedom to select collaborators or enter informal modes of cooperation, which could arise from knowledge transfer activities (Etzkowitz 2002 in Jain, et al. 2009). Based on this reasoning we argue that the more inclined the academic researcher is to the concepts of open science, the more intensive is the extent (s)he both formally and informally collaborates with the scientific community. Research Productivity and Quality and Knowledge Flows. Overall, we expect that researchers who publish a lot and receive many citations will have more ongoing research projects, personnel exchange programs and publications in co-authorship with other laboratories than the researchers of lower scientific productivity and quality. The same refers to the extent of dissemination of knowledge at scientific conferences. When it comes to publications timing and contents, it is expected that researchers with high scientific quality will publish their results without delays once the research project is completed. Also, we argue that they will be less likely to conceal information from the publication than their less productive colleagues (Haeussler, et al. 2010), despite some contrary evidence in the literature (Blumenthal, et al. 1997; Shibayama 2010). On the contrary, concerning the informal knowledge sharing, our argumentation follows prior research which has shown that those researchers who publish more are more likely to refuse requests for data and materials to other researchers. The justification lies in the increase of the opportunity cost of compliance; namely, it is probable that more eminent scientists are less likely to respond to requests due to time limitations (Blumenthal, et al. 1997; Campbell, et al. 2000; Campbell, et al. 2002; Walsh, et al. 2003; Walsh, et al. 2007; Hong, and Walsh 2009; Shibayama 2010; Shibayama 2011).

Institutional and Environmental Determinants of Knowledge Flows University Technology Transfer Policy and Knowledge Flows. Technology transfer offices (TTOs) are established at universities with the purpose of encouraging and assisting the researchers

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with the commercial exploitation of the generated results. Due to their demanding function of “boundary spanners” between the academic inventors and the industry, the work of TT officers is at the “fuzzy front end of innovation, where market, legal, technology and competitive uncertainties coalesce” (Markman, et al. 2004). Prior findings showing the direct relationship between the technology transfer policy of the researchers’ organization and formal and informal knowledge diffusion are very scant. This is probably because it is assumed that TTOs have only limited direct interactions with their researchers’ collaborative endeavors. These usually refer to the requests to maintain secrecy regarding the inventions and discoveries to ensure patent protection and prevent potential intellectual property from being compromised through premature disclosure in conferences (Jain, et al. 2009). Despite the positive role of TTOs in the knowledge transfer process, there is evidence of delays and more difficulties with fulfilling material transfer requests as well as more restrictions in publishing when the TTO gets involved in the process (Walsh, et al. 2007). Thus, our reasoning suggests that the extent of aggressiveness of university technology transfer policy will be negatively related to the extent of both formal and informal collaboration of academic researchers with members of the scientific community. Competition and Knowledge Flows. The empirical evidence with respect to the impact of competition on knowledge flows has been straightforward: the extent of scientific competition in the area, expressed as the number of competing laboratories for publication priority, seems to be one of the most important predictors of restrictions in both formal and informal collaboration among researchers in the life science field (Blumenthal, et al. 1997; Campbell, et al. 2002; Louis, et al. 2002; Blumenthal, et al. 2006; Walsh, et al. 2007; Hong, and Walsh 2009; Haeussler, et al. 2010). Based on the evidence presented above we have identified four groups of determinants of formal and informal knowledge diffusion in the life science community: (1) „traditional“ and (2) „new-type“ knowledge transfer activities, and factors referring to the (3) human and social capital as well as (4) institutional and environmental characteristics related to individual researchers. The model

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is controlled for certain demographic and professional traits of individual researchers. This framework (see Figure 1) is presented as the conceptual model of knowledge transfer process from the perspective of an individual researcher, and to our belief, it should provide a useful outline of the existing literature; explain the determinants of knowledge flows in the life science community as well as direct future empirical studies on this topic. Figure 1 The Theoretical Model of Knowledge Transfer Process from the Perspective of an Individual Researcher, with Dependent, Independent and Control Variables Shown. TRADITIONAL FORMS OF KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER consulting, sponsored research, university-industry joint publications, university-industry personnel exchange, equity holding in companies

HUMAN AND SOCIAL CAPITAL professional age tenure scientific values scientific productivity and quality

“NEW-TYPE” FORMS OF KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER invention disclosing, patenting, licensing, business planning, spinning-off, products on the market

KNOWLEDGE FLOWS BETWEEN RESEARCHERS: FORMAL COLLABORATION collaborative research projects, joint publications, personnel exchange, dissemination of findings at conferences, publication timing and content

+

P5, P6

+ INFORMAL COLLABORATION sharing of research P7, information and P8 materials+

INSTITUTIONAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL CHARACTERISTICS institutional technology transfer policy intensity of scientific competition Legend:

P9, P10

P11 + DEMOGRAPHIC AND P12 -

PROFESSIONAL CHARACTERISTICS gender, ethnicity, country institution, type of research, scientific field, size and sources of funding

Dependent variables Independent variables Control variables

Empirical Study of Knowledge Transfer Flows in the Life Sciences This section illuminates key propositions regarding knowledge transfer-knowledge flows interactions discussed in the theoretical part of the paper. It is based on data obtained from the pilot empirical study, which included a series of in-depth interviews with key informants (Patton 1990) in the field. Over 20 hours of personal interviews with life science researchers from Croatia, Germany,

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Israel, Italy, Slovenia and the USA were analyzed with the aim of obtaining their experiences, attitudes and perceptions regarding the potential role knowledge transfer activities might play in the intensity of their formal and informal interaction with other members of their scientific community. The in-depth interviews were also used in order to develop and pre-test parameters for the quantitative part of the study. The sample included researchers affiliated to pre-clinical and clinical departments of higher education institutions, research institutes and biotechnology companies. The life science fields of interest included: molecular biology, biochemistry; genetics, genomics, bioinformatics; cellular and developmental biology; immunology; biophysics; diagnostics, therapeutics, public health and biotechnology. All of the respondents were tenured faculty and had been involved in some form of knowledge transfer activity.

“Traditional” Knowledge Transfer Activities at the Forefront Our investigation showed that the interviewees had had most knowledge transfer experience with consulting. This is in line with the existing data: in the early 1990s more than 90 percent of lifescience companies in the USA participated in some form of university-industry relationship, with having university faculty as consultants being the dominant form of collaboration. On the other hand, up to 28% of life science faculty at US medical schools report receiving some industrial support (Blumenthal, et al. 1996).

Determinants of Knowledge Sharing Restrictions in the Life Sciences Competition in research, or high pressure related to priority in publishing, is viewed as a primary reason for the lack of openness in the life science communities. In addition, our interviewees agreed that the reasons for sharing rejections are more often of objective nature, than resulting from envy or specific personal traits. The “objective reasons” refer to the lack of time and physical resources: in some laboratories there is a several months long waiting list for experiments to be done on exclusive equipment. These observations are corresponding to prior research findings, which put

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scientific competition, limited resources and logistical difficulties ahead of knowledge transfer activities when assessing their impact on knowledge sharing (Blumenthal, et al. 1997; Louis, et al. 2002; Walsh, et al. 2007). Interestingly, the perception of the interviewees is that secrecy in science, both formal and informal, is present in all biomedical fields, and not just in genetics, which have been evaluated in the literature as “most susceptible to sharing restrictions” due to a high level of competition and substantial commercial considerations (Walsh, et al. 2003).

Knowledge Transfer and Informal Knowledge Sharing: Paperwork-Free Cooperation Exactly the collaboration that is not based on contracts or other formal “hurdles” was considered by the interviewees as having the highest quality. Collaboration projects are mostly motivated by friendship initiated during scientific conferences, or sometimes by interests, as a result of literature search. However, even in the case of friendly context of exchange of information or materials, “paperwork-free” cooperation is not always possible. In fact, material transfer agreements (MTAs) have become common in all types of research institutions and usually require that the materials that are subject to transfer are not used for commercial purposes. Our interviewees usually viewed MTAs in a positive light, since they understood that intellectual property rights related to research materials needed to be protected whether these were patented or not. Yet, they reported that accessing mice, cell lines and other inputs for further research was sometimes problematic despite the fact that non-profit institutions should be able to freely obtain these for their research. Furthermore, a clear distinction must be made between published and unpublished research results: publication transfers the research results to the public domain and obliges the authors to provide the interested parties with the requested protocols or reagents. Still, our respondents noticed that scientists were not always willing to share published reagents with the scientific community. The consequences of rejections for the inquiring researchers include refocusing research in another area or losing time to produce the needed materials on their own. Researchers are certainly even more reluctant to share unpublished data, and the primary reason seems to lie in high competition.

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Knowledge Transfer and Formal Sharing: PhD Students, Conferences and Publications “Traditional” knowledge transfer activities were often mentioned in the context of doctoral students. Contractual relationships with the business sector strictly prohibited information disclosing for the purpose of protection of company interests, and this was reflected in conflicting situations for the doctoral students, who had been under pressure to publicly report the results of their theses experiments. Sometimes this problem was solved by simply obtaining prior consent from the company, but in other cases the “overemphasized confidentiality” was perceived as unnecessary and disruptive. Interestingly, some laboratories that decided to take a more applied research direction and started receiving a substantial amount of funding from industry decided not to employ doctoral students, but only technicians and post-doctoral researchers, who had been informed in advance that they would not be able to publish the research results without limitations. Concerning the dissemination of findings at scientific conferences, attitudes of interviewees differed considerably. While some respondents simply did not attend conferences if they were not allowed to disclose information or did not present the results of the research done in collaboration with the industry, others had difficulty with accepting the new obligation of meeting with the patent attorneys before making the presentations for the scientific meetings due to the “pressure on core academic mission”. Another interesting point was that “scientists more and more often keep their cards close to their chest”, which reflects the perception that scientists do not want to talk about unpublished data at the scientific meetings anymore. This lack of openness about unpublished work resulted in the regular dissemination of data with which other researchers have already previously become familiar – through publications. When it comes to the impact of the “new-type” knowledge transfer activities on publication timing, the frequently reported experience was that publication delays due to protection of research results could be very risky and dangerous, particularly in the cases when the priority that is lost is related to work on a central project of the researcher. However, experience of some respondents

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indicated that the fear of losing priority in publication due to filing a patent application was irrational, since these two processes could practically be done in parallel. In summary, knowledge transfer activities, and particularly patenting, have been considered as a “double-edged sword”. On the positive side, researchers agreed that without intellectual property rights it would not be possible to attract investors from industry for further exploitation of their inventions. On the negative side, concerns of researchers related to endangering the norms of open science were accompanied by the observations that due to its costliness for the research institution, “protecting a property is like having a state without an army, and a lot of hungry nomads around who are ready to attack”. Moreover, the increased „push“ for involvement in knowledge transfer activities by attorneys at research institutions was often perceived as time-consuming and resulting in a lot of irrelevant activity and inadequately evaluated technologies. In the background of different perceptions regarding knowledge transfer flows are differing views of researchers regarding the general understanding of the researchers’ role in society: if we consider only the boundary perceptions, on one hand, scientists are viewed primarily as enthusiasts driven by innovativeness and originality, who need to have complete freedom to discover new knowledge and teach that knowledge without any limitations and who develop technologies with potential commercial applications only accidentally, not intentionally. On the other hand, scientists are perceived as workers with diverse work capacities: successful scientists have no problems with undertaking multiple roles, including those related to commercial activity; with the ultimate “anthropocentric” goal of solving both fundamentally and technologically interesting problems.

Conclusion and Implications for Future Research Researchers, public institutions managers and policy makers are increasingly interested in the impact of knowledge transfer activities on knowledge diffusion in science. Knowledge and technology transfer have become widely understood as desirable and appropriate activities for research universities (Colyvas, and Powell 2006). In the same time concerns over potential negative 19

impacts of these activities on the norms of open science have arisen, particularly because of highprofile controversies regarding patenting of research tools or inputs for subsequent research as well as expansion of proprietary rights to life forms (Caulfield and Ogbogu 2008). Encouraged by increasing debates, scholars have sought to investigate whether the information flows have truly been compromised due to knowledge transfer activities, and if so, to explore the consequences of these limitations on the progress of science. The evidence from the conducted studies is mixed; thus, the majority of the questions still remains open and calls for further research. In this paper we provided a broad overview of knowledge flows in the life science community, in which we considered both the individual and the environmental determinants of different forms of collaborative efforts among researchers. Furthermore, we expanded the existing research on knowledge transfer from academia to industry by taking into account a wide range of such activities in assessing their role in the diffusion of formal and informal scientific knowledge. Through recognizing the heterogeneity in knowledge transfer activities in a comprehensive individual-level conceptual model, we invoked the assumption that the extent of impact of knowledge transfer process on knowledge flows cannot be fully measured if the studies neglect the diversity of knowledge transfer activities or concentrate on only one aspect of knowledge diffusion. Thus, the framework developed within this research offers some new insights that should help increase our understanding of determinants of formal and informal knowledge flows in the life sciences in relation to knowledge transfer activities as well as guide prospective empirical studies. In addition to the described pilot empirical study that largely relies on qualitative data, the quantitative study will be conducted in a cross-national context, using questionnaire surveys, to check whether there are significant differences in the results when researchers from ten different countries, including Croatia, Slovenia, Germany, Italy, Israel and USA, are taken into account. This represents an important contribution because so far, the majority of the published articles in the field have focused only on one country, predominantly the USA (Baldini 2008). The final results of the study

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will shed light on the determinants, both positive and negative, of knowledge sharing in the life science communities. Previous studies have produced mixed results, with the sharing restricting factors ranging from scientific competition and logistical difficulties, to patents. Therefore, based on the obtained findings it will be possible to estimate whether the present concerns of scholars and policy makers over increasing secrecy in the life sciences have been targeting the real cause of problems.

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