Research network position and innovative performance: Evidence from the pharmaceutical industry

Other conference contribution, 2013

Building upon the literature demonstrating the importance of collaborative research and networks for the development of new pharmaceuticals, this paper describes co-publication networks in phar- maceutical cancer research and analyzes how the position within these networks and collaboration with different partners is related to the product innovation of both pharmaceutical and biotechnol- ogy firms. This paper analyzes these issues through econometric analysis as well as social network analysis using a unique dataset based on scientific co-publications, new drug approvals, and firm level data. We observe that the number of organizations in co-publication networks expands faster than the collaborations within the networks. Global pharmaceutical companies tend to be highly connected and occupy central positions in the co-publication networks. Direct and indirect linkages, particularly to academic institutions, are beneficial for product innovations. In contrast to most of the existing literature, we find that co-publication of pharmaceutical companies with biotechnol- ogy companies is a rather rare event – and we do not find a significant association to the firm’s innovative performance.