Bridging the Boundaries of Science and Technology: Author-Inventors and Quality of Inventions

A growing body of research examines the relationship between science and technology by using a social network lens to look at the collaboration networks between authors and inventors. Building on this research, we study how publishing inventors’ (author-inventors’) structural position in scientific (co-authorship) and technological (co-invention) networks affects the quality of their inventions. We probe author-inventors’ characteristics by identifying those who act as cutpoints—i.e., those who play a pivotal role in holding the two networks together. Cutpoints can be connected to more or less cohesive subgroups of the scientific network and hence have access to more or less diverse knowledge bases. The results of the analysis suggest that author-inventors’ structural position—in particular, whether they are cutpoints and belong to more cohesive subgroups of the scientific network—is highly consequential for the quality of the inventions with which they are involved. We tested our hypotheses in the emerging field of nanotechnology. The theoretical and managerial implications of the results are discussed.