Scientific Human Capital And Institutional Incentives: The Roles of Topic Knowledge and Research Skills

Abstract

Academic scientists develop deep topic knowledge in highly specialized niches. However, they also acquire extensive skills to undertake advanced research in their fields. Prior research examining how firms use scientists’ human capital typically focuses on a generalist-specialist distinction in breadth of topic knowledge or a basic-applied distinction in research orientation. This paper emphasizes an alternative distinction between two dimensions of scientific human capital: topic knowledge and scientific research skills. I build on prior literature on scientific careers and the logic of scientific inquiry to analyze how each dimension provides value in corporate research. I test my arguments using longitudinal data on researchers in regenerative medicine. While scientists moving to industry have more conceptually diverse subsequent research output, there is little evidence of other changes in their research productivity, impact, or basic-applied focus. This is consistent with industry more highly valuing the wider research skills of scientists hired from academia. It contrasts with a view in which firms primarily focus on exploiting highly specialized, but narrow, topic knowledge for commercial purposes. The findings also provide insights into how the division of scientific labor between academia and industry may shape the knowledge accumulation process in areas where academic and commercial research overlap.