The impact of network positions in scientific collaboration on pharmaceutical firms' technological innovation performance: Moderating roles of scientific collaboration strength and patent stock

Scientific knowledge is an underlying basis for technological innovation in the pharmaceutical industry. Collaboration is the main way to participate in the creation of scientific knowledge for pharmaceutical firms. Will network positions in scientific collaboration affect their technological innovation performance? Moreover, what factors moderate the firms' scientific collaboration network positions and technological innovation link? Using a dataset based on 194 Chinese publicly traded pharmaceutical companies, this paper constructs the dynamic scientific collaboration networks among 1,826 organizations by analyzing 4,092 papers included in CNKI and Web of Science databases. Then we probe the impact and boundaries of positions in the scientific collaboration network of pharmaceutical firms on their technological innovation performance through the negative binomial modeling approach. Our study confirms that degree centrality has an inverted U-shaped impact on pharmaceutical firms' technological innovation performance, while structural holes benefit it. Moreover, this article identifies that the strength of scientific collaboration positively moderates the U-shaped relationship between degree centrality and technological innovation of pharmaceutical firms, the matching of high patent stock and high structural holes can promote their technological innovation performance. The results deepen the present understanding of scientific collaboration in the pharmaceutical industry and offer new insights into the formulation of pharmaceutical firms' scientific collaboration strategies.

Automated summary

This paper investigates the impact of network positions in the scientific collaboration network on technological innovation performance of pharmaceutical firms. The study finds that degree centrality has an inverted U-shaped impact on technological innovation performance, while structural holes benefit it. The strength of scientific collaboration positively moderates the U-shaped relationship between degree centrality and technological innovation, and the matching of high patent stock and high structural holes can promote technological innovation performance.