Bringing Emerging Technologies to Market: Does Academic Research Promote Commercial Exploration and Exploitation?

Many studies have demonstrated that academic research plays an important role in the development of emerging technologies. Publishing academic research, research by scientists that is shared with the broader research community via journal publications and conference presentations, plays an important role in the development of emerging technologies. While much is known about the relationship between academic research and invention capability (e.g., patent-generation capability), the link between academic research and commercial products demands further investigation. This paper presents a longitudinal study of the link between firms' academic research activity and commercial exploration and exploitation of emerging technology knowledge. According to our findings, firms with an active program of publishing academic research are more likely to commercially explore (via pioneer products) and exploit (via greater product scope) their emerging technology investment.