Do Different Firm Activities and Characteristics Generate Different Attitudes Toward Research Collaboration and Publication? An Analysis of the Italian Biotech Sector

An increasing attention is being devoted by many scholars to the phenomenon of the collaborations between university and other research institutions with industry. The new knowledge arising from such collaborations is often disclosed trough the scientific publications and the creation of new knowledge is rarely a solitary activity; knowledge creation and innovative activities usually take place within networks and come out from collaborations. Notwithstanding this increasing attention, some aspects of such collaborations remain probably not enough investigated. In particular there is need of a thorough analysis about the relationship between the activities and characteristics of the firms on one side and the frequency of the collaborations and the characteristics of the research networks on the other one. This paper tries to increase the knowledge in this direction, treating this issue with reference to the Italian biotech sector. A database identifies the existing Italian biotech firms at the end of 2005 and classify them according to the OECD criteria, which identify different typologies of firms according to the kind of activity mainly conducted. We crossed such data with data on publications (from ISI-Web of Science: number of publications; number, nature and localizations of co-authoring institutions) and data on firm size (from AIDA). Through an econometric analysis we try to verify if the different characteristics of the firms are related to different behaviour toward publication and collaboration. The results suggest that such relationships do exist: larger firms publish more and have larger networks of co-autorships. A more original result is that, even controlling for firm size, the belonging of a firm to an OECD typology has an effect on the number of publications done and on the number and quality of collaborations in publications activated by that firm. More precisely, consistently with their specific goals and attitudes, firms specifically devoted to R&D activity publish more than the other typologies of firms and targeted firms have more collaborators in their publications. These results have some consequences also in terms of policy: in fact the policies to adopt in relation to the collaboration in research and the dissemination of its results should be different according to the different typologies of firms. A complex and differentiated sector requires differently modulated policies