We argue in this paper that when the knowledge base of an industry is both complex and expanding and the sources of expertise are widely dispersed, the locus of innovation will be found in networks of learning, rather than in individual firms. The large-scale reliance on interorganizational collaborations in the biotechnology industry reflects a fundamental and pervasive concern with access to knowledge. We develop a network approach to organizational learning and derive firm-level, longitudinal hypotheses that link research and development alliances, experience with managing interfirm relationships, network position, rates of growth, and portfolios of collaborative activities. We test these hypotheses on a sample of dedicated biotechnology firms in the years 1990-1994. Results from pooled, within-firm, time series analyses support a learning view and have broad implications for future theoretical and empirical research on organizational networks and strategic alliances.*

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This paper focuses on the spatial concentration of two essential factors of production in the commercial field of biotechnology: ideas and money. The location of both research-intensive biotech firms and the venture capital firms that fund biotech is highly clustered in a handful of key U.S. regions. The commercialization of a new medicine and the financing of a high-risk startup firm are both activities that have an identifiable timeline, and often involve collaboration with multiple participants. The importance of tacit knowledge, face-to-face contact, and the ability to learn and manage across multiple projects are critical reasons for the continuing importance of geographic propinquity in biotech. Over the period 1988-99, more than half of the U.S. biotech firms received locally-based venture funding. Those firms receiving non-local support were older, larger, and had moved research projects further along the commercialization process. Similarly, as VC firms grow older and bigger, they invest in more non-local firms. But these patterns have a strong regional basis, with notable differences between Boston, New York, and West Coast money. Biotechnology is unusual in its dual dependence on basic science and venture financing; other fields in which product development is not as dependent on the underlying science may have different spatial patterns.

Traditional research on gender differences in productivity focuses on academic scientists, and rarely investigates outcomes other than publications. We investigate gender disparities in commercial outcomes, for scientists in both the academic and industrial sectors. Using a unique combination of career history data and patenting information across a period of two decades, we present descriptive statistics and graphical trends of male and female commercialization. Empirical evidence indicates that female scientists engage in and produce less commercial work then their male counterparts, and that the degree of disparity remains constant across time. The quality and impact of women’s commercial work remains the same or better than that of men scientists, however. These results imply that a necessary focus for future work is to understand the personal, structural, and organizational reasons for the filtering process which leads to such a small proportion of female inventors. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 2005

How the race and gender diversity of team members is related to innovative science and technology outcomes is debated in the scholarly literature. Some studies find diversity is linked to creativity and productivity, other studies find that diversity has no effect or even negative effects on team outcomes. Based on a critical review of the literature, this paper explains the seemingly contradictory findings through careful attention to the organizational contexts of team diversity. We distinguish between representational diversity and full integration of minority scientists. Representational diversity, where organizations have workforces that match the pool of degree recipients in relevant fields, is a necessary but not sufficient condition for diversity to yield benefits. Full integration of minority scientists (i.e., including women and people of color) in an interaction context that allows for more level information exchange, unimpeded by the asymmetrical power relationships that are common across many scientific organizations, is when the full potential for diversity to have innovative outcomes is realized. Under conditions of equitable and integrated work environments, diversity leads to creativity, innovation, productivity, and positive reputational (status) effects. Thus, effective policies for diversity in science and engineering must also address integration in the organizational contexts in which diverse teams are embedded.