Latest
*Giffard, 2026, Narrative disconnect: where do our ideas about invention come from? in: History and Technology
Anckaert and Cassiman, 2026, Fostering creativity through the exploitation of scientific and technological knowledge: An in-depth study of technology development in the lithium-ion battery field, in: Industrial and Corporate Change
Jaffe, et al., 2026, Real Effects of Academic Research Revisited (NBER)
Anckaert, 2025, When the drugs (don’t) work: The role of science in product commercialization, in: Research Policy. “Examining the basic and applied nature of the scientific knowledge base underlying 5,613 early-stage drug candidates from 1995 to 2008, I find that despite the importance of advances made in basic science, its predictive and abstract outcomes on their own are unlikely to foster the development of drug candidates that achieve market approval. The substantial gap between the predictive rules from basic research and the unpredictable outcomes that emerge in variable states of human physiology, seems to limit the extent to which fundamental insights from basic science reduce the uncertainty related to the complexity of the human body in the real-world environment.”
Ashish Arora, et al., 2025, The reorganization of the American innovation ecosystem and the challenge of translating science, in: Industrial and Corporate Change
Kao, 2025, Mapping the Cancer Genome and R&D Decisions in the Pharmaceutical Industry
Ester Leslie, 2023, The Rise and Fall of Imperial Chemical Industries: Synthetics, Sensism and the Environment
Ahmadov, 2022, Big Tech and Research Funding: A Bibliometric Approach (Universidade Nova de Lisboa)
Hintz, 2021, American Independent Inventors in an Era of Corporate R&D
Rembrand Koning, et al., 2021, Who do we invent for? Patents by women focus more on women’s health, but few women get to invent, in: Science
Dorschel, 2021, Discovering needs for digital capitalism: the hybrid profession of data science, in: Big Data and Society. “[D]ata scientists as discoverers of needs. They are imagined as explorative work subjects who can establish growth for digital capitalism by generating behavioural patterns that allow for personalization, customization and optimization practices.”
New Things Under the Sun – a living literature review on social science research about innovation
R&D Management Association (RADMA)
2010-2020
*Marx and Fuegi, 2020, Reliance on science: worldwide front-page patent citations to scientific articles, in: Strategic Management Journal. “Approximately 17.6% of USPTO patents granted since 1947 contain at least one citation to science on their front page. That trend is growing, up from 6.7% in 1976 to 25.6% in 2018…Academic patents have far more citations to science than those assigned to firms (14 on average, vs. 2 for corporate patents and 1.3 for government patents), a rate which has grown dramatically, especially in the 1990s…This is consistent with the observation of one of the attorneys we interviewed, who said that the sort of academic scientists whose works are patented by universities know the academic literature extremely well and cite it generously. By contrast, inventors in firms are not as well acquainted with published work. Indeed, although there is some growth in the number of scientific citations per patent among corporations (and government), the rate of increase pales in comparison to universities. Lone inventors cite less science than any of the other groups, with less than half a citation to science per patent and little growth in this rate…Which fields of innovation are most reliant on science?…Chemistry and Metallurgy has the highest number of citations to science per patent, followed by Human Necessities. Mechanical Engineering is the least reliant technology category, with little growth over the full time-span…Approximately 1.5% of all papers are cited by the front pages of patents worldwide.”
Arora, et al., 2017, The decline of science in corporate R&D, in: Strategic Management Journal
Brandt, 2016, The emergence of the data science profession (Columbia University). “Data nerds have chosen ‘science’ as such a term. They do not follow scientific principles, as they said in
their own accounts and which we could see comparatively. The imagery of science as an institutional system for arcane work is useful nonetheless, precisely because the mechanisms of control disciplines offer promise to apply to data science as well.” (p. 338)
Curry, 2013, Industrial evolution: mechanical and biological innovation at the General Electric Research Laboratory, in: Technology and Culture
Sally Smith Hughes, 2011, Genentech: the Beginnings of Biotech
2000-2010
Pattit, et al., 2007, What Can We Learn from the History of Corporate R&D to Understand Current Innovation Management Challenges?
Fleming and Marx, 2006, Managing creativity in small worlds, in: California Management Review
*Scranton, 2006, Technology‐led innovation: the non‐linearity of US jet propulsion development, in: History and Technology. “Despite repeated announcements of its death or uselessness, the ‘linear model’ of science–technology relations persists, the notion that fundamental scientific research precedes applied studies that in time generate technological advances. This article undertakes first to revisit investigations and critiques of the model, and to remind historians of technology that intriguing alternatives to it have been developed. Second, using the case study of Cold War military jet propulsion, it argues that innovative, complex technologies have been created without reliable understanding of scientific fundamentals. These were messy, non‐linear, and failure‐filled processes, to be sure, yet they may well prove to have been more the rule than the exception, once scholars pursue richly textured studies of technical practice in experimental development.”
Brockhoff, et al. (eds.), 2000, Readings in Technology Management
20thC
Ganguly, 1999, Business-driven Research & Development – Managing Knowledge to Create Wealth
Oakes, 1995, 50 Years of Shell Research at Sittingbourne 1945-1995 (Shell)
Anderson, 1993, Towards exemplary research in the management of technology – an introductory essay, in: Journal of Engineering and Technology Management
Peacock, 1993, Communication between R&D and its customers: a study of BT Laboratories, in: R&D Management
Rothwell, 1992, Successful industrial innovation: critical factors for the 1990s, in: R&D Management
Mansfield, 1991, Academic research and industrial Innovation, in: Research Policy
Clayton and Algar, 1989, The GEC Research Laboratories, 1919-1984
T. S. C. Orr, 1989, Roger Altounyan: the man and his work, in: Respiratory Medicine (also see Robert Slinn: The Discovery of Sodium Chromoglycate (Intal), Royal Society of Chemistry, 2022). “It has been our experience at Fisons that the most meaningful research strategy is to look for clinical efficacy at an early stage in the clinical pharmacological profiling of a drug. It is ironic that the self-challenging activities that led to the identification of sodium cromoglycate in 1965 would not be permitted today, although it cannot be denied that the some 3000 bronchial challenges that Roger Altounyan conducted on himself at Manchester must have insulted an already injured organ, and may have contributed to his death from asthma in December 1987…There is a further irony in the fact that on the two occasions when Roger Altounyan was ordered to stop testing new compounds on himself and, characteristically, disobeyed these instructions, he identified two useful drugs within a year of each ban. One was Intal, the other was Tilade (nedocromil sodium).”
Hounshell, 1988, Science and Corporate Strategy: Du Pont R&D, 1902-1980 (also see a presentation by the same author “Historical Perspective on Corporate R&D“)
Johnston, 1987, Management for Engineers
Miller, 1986, Managing Professionals in Research and Development
Darling, 1985, 40 Years of Progress: a History of the Wallsend Research Station, 1945-1985
Badawy, 1982, Developing Managerial Skills in Engineers and Scientists: Succeeding as a Technical Manager
Reader, 1980, Fifty years of Unilever, 1930-1980
Kelly and Kranzberg, 1979, Technological Innovation: A Critical Review of Current Knowledge
Peacock, 1978, Jealott’s Hill: fifty years of agricultural research (ICI)
*Langrish, et al., 1972, Wealth from Knowledge: Studies of Innovation in Industry. “Five-point scale of size of change of technology” (pp. 65-66).
Mansfield, et al., 1971, Research and Innovation in the Modern Corporation
Reader, 1970, Imperial Chemical Industries: a History
Burns and Stalker, 1968, The Management of Innovation
Beer, 1958, Coal tar dye manufacture and the origins of the modern industrial research laboratory, in: Isis
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