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The Growth Lab's Research Seminar series is a weekly seminar that brings together researchers from across the academic spectrum who share an interest in growth and development.
Location: Online only Register: https://harvard.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_UlEuxqQ5QTKINYHeR-xhhA
Speaker: Federico Bignone (University of Warwick)
Paper Abstract: (Coauthored with Russell Thomson) Research collaborations between universities and industry are an important channel of innovation. In this paper, we provide a systematic overview of US university-industry collaborations, drawing upon all US-based scientific publications from 1980 to 2013 in Web of Science, matched to the relevant business characteristics in BvD Orbis. We find that university-industry collaborations increased from 2% to 6% of all indexed publications. A decrease in direct corporate involvement in scientific research accompanies this surge. Furthermore, we show that this increase is influenced by factors related to the nature of science such as the burden of knowledge, rather than companies' commercial considerations. Specifically, the likelihood of collaboration increases as the speed of scientific progress increases, with differences by firm size.
Bio: Federico Bignone is a postdoctoral researcher at Warwick Business School, University of Warwick (UK). He recently earned his PhD in Economics from Swinburne University of Technology (Australia) and the University of Bordeaux (France). His research primarily focuses on economics of innovation and science, as well as corporate finance. Specifically, his projects explore various aspects of the much-discussed decline in corporate science. He examines how the burden of knowledge may affect the likelihood of university-industry collaborations. Additionally, he investigates whether corporate science has become increasingly more applied and whether initial public offerings (IPOs) positively impact companies’ scientific research. Recently, he has been involved in a UK government-funded project on AI new ventures and interactions with the science base.