The impact of convergence between science and technology on innovation

Abstract

This study investigates the effects of convergence of science and technology on innovation impact, specifically how convergence helps R&D organizations to apply scientific knowledge to their R&D activities. In addition to direct effects of convergence, we address the moderating effects of scientific capacity, knowledge spillover, and knowledge maturity from the knowledge side. The empirical analysis, which employs a zero inflated negative binomial regression model uses data on 2074 patents granted to US organizations from the pharmaceutical industry. The results show that an increase in the proportion of scientific knowledge in convergence has a positive and curvilinear relationship with innovation impact. Also, we find that the organization's scientific capacity, regional scientific knowledge spillover, and knowledge maturity positively moderate the relationship between convergence and innovation impact. Our findings underline the importance of convergence between science and technology as well as provide implications on how to improve the outcome of an organization's research and development process.

Communication Barrier, Spillover Effect and Industrial-Technological Innovation

“…Subsequently, Zhou [47] firstly proved that firm cooperation can promote innovation diffusion, and then further proved that excellent market structure, favorable natural environment, excellent technological innovation, sound governance policies, and reasonable firm size have a positive impact on innovation diffusion. Lee [48] also draws a similar conclusion: when researchers can communicate with each other, spillover effect is more obvious, which effectively strengthens the maturity of scientific capacity, regional knowledge and scientific knowledge, promotes the integration of science and technology, and achieves effective innovative results. Xie [49] analyzed the worldwide data from 2007 to 2015 and concluded that international trade had an impact on innovation through information diffusion effect, firm competition effect and value chain optimization effect.…”

Corporate Governance Structure, Financial Capability, and the R&D Intensity in Chinese Sports Sector: Evidence from Listed Sports Companies

“…A firm's financial condition and flow of assets have an impact on its R&D expenditures [30]. The effect of asset liquidity on innovation is larger for smaller and younger firms [10]. Additionally, internal cash flows are the main source of R&D investment [16], and R&D intensity is positively related to cash flow [31,32].…”

“…The three most popular financial performance indicators used to measure current profitability are return on assets (ROA), return on sales (ROS), and return on equity (ROE) [26,28]. ROA is defined as the ratio of net income to total assets [10,33]; ROS is defined as the ratio of net income to sales [26,28]; ROE is defined as the ratio of net income to shareholders' equity [17,28]. The corporate R&D expenditure is relative to corporate profitability; but, it is not significantly related to abnormal returns of firms in American bio-pharmaceutical listed companies [39].…”

“…R&D intensity is a measure for the effort the company puts into pursuing innovation and can also be used as proxies for the absorptive capacity of the firm and measures to rank companies and countries by government entities [76]. Considering that total assets are the most important factor influencing R&D investment and an important determinant of R&D ability, following related studies [10,16,52], we selected R&D intensity (RDA) as our dependent variable and measured it by using R&D expenditure divided by total assets. Following the convention, all missing values for R&D expenditure were replaced with zeroes, and the upper limit of R&D intensity was set at 1 [77].…”

“…Research and Development (R&D) has become a core business component of firms [7] as it is both a key ingredient in the introduction of new products and processes [8] and a key source of rapid growth, sustainable development, and competitive advantages [9]. R&D investment plays a decisive role in initiating and sustaining innovation activities of technological enterprises [10], not only improving short-term and long-term financial performance but also facilitating the acquisition of competitive advantages [11]. Thus, it is very necessary to focus on the innovation development of sports firms, especially their R&D investment issue.…”