Knowledge creation and commercialisation: the role of R&D experience and R&D network position

Abstract

The aim of this research is to empirically examine the relationships between an organisation' s prior research and development (R&D) experience, its position in multiple collaborative R&D networks and its ability to create, and commercialise knowledge. Including the notion that knowledge creation and knowledge commercialisation co-evolve and interact on a system level, we simultaneously analyse these R&D outputs on the level of the organisation. With insights from organisational learning and social network theory we hypothesised that prior R&D experiences, the number of collaborations and the extent of clustering in R&D networks are related to knowledge creation and knowledge commercialisation. The R&D activities in which organisations can gain experience are measured as participating in publicly (co-)funded research projects, publishing scientific articles and filing patents. Through these R&D experiences organisations are inherently included in a corresponding R&D network. We test our hypotheses using carbon dioxide (CO2) capture technology R&D in the process of carbon capture and storage (CCS) as case. The results show that prior R&D experiences positively influence the likelihood of creating and commercialising knowledge. This is especially the case when (i) publication experience is combined with experience with other R&D activities for knowledge creation and (ii) patent experience is combined with experience with other R&D activities for knowledge commercialisation. Cross-relationships between patent experience and knowledge creation and between publishing experience and knowledge commercialisation are not found. Depending on the type of R&D network and the type of R&D output, the number of collaborations is positively or negatively related to the R&D output. The degree of clustering is negatively associated with R&D output. Based on these findings we provide practical implications and suggestions for further research.