On Thursday, 6 September 2018, Felix Pöge received the EPIP Best Paper Award for Young Researchers for the paper “A Firm Scientific Community”. The prize is bestowed with 500 Euros and was conferred upon him during the EPIP 2018 Conference at the ESMT Berlin. Felix Pöge is Doctoral Student and Junior Research Fellow at the department Innovation and Entrepreneurship Research.
The paper investigates the extent to which firms participate in scientific communities’ activities and whether this facilitates the exchange and transfer of scientific knowledge to firms’ technological activities. The focus is on two modes of interactions of firms with scientific communities: the participation in and the sponsorship of international scientific conferences. In particular, the focus is on the field of computer science. The paper is joint work with Dr. Stefano Baruffaldi, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute.
First, the results document that both conference participation and sponsorship by firms is frequent and concentrated at events of the highest quality. Even within individual conferences, firm contributions stand out in quality. Second, firms are significantly more likely to cite in their scientific articles and patents scientific articles presented at a conference which they attended relative to articles presented at comparable conferences.
To provide causal evidence, the authors use the fact that academic researchers are more likely to attend conferences whose locations they can access easier by airplane. Thus, at a conference, firms have a higher likelihood to observe research by researchers with a direct flight to that conference.
EPIP (European Policy for Intellectual Property) is an international, independent, interdisciplinary, non-profit association of researchers with the objective to be a leading European platform for the analysis and discussion of intellectual property systems and intangible assets. EPIP encourages research regarding economic, legal, managerial, social, political and historical aspects of intellectual property rights at national, European and international levels. It contributes ideas, concepts and discussions that will promote innovation, productivity and growth in Europe and beyond and informs and encourages policy-oriented discussion involving political and administrative bodies and stakeholders in Europe. EPIP cooperates with other associations with similar objectives.