Lynne Zucker

University of California, Los Angeles | UCLA · Department of Sociology

Experiments have long played a crucial role in various scientific disciplines and have been gaining ground in organization theory, where they add unique value by establishing causality and uncovering theoretical mechanisms. This essay provides an overview of the merits and procedures of the experimental methodology, with an emphasis on its applicat...

Recent research has conceptualized legitimacy as a multi-level phenomenon comprising propriety and validity. Propriety refers to an individual evaluator’s belief that a legitimacy object is appropri-ate for its social context, whereas validity denotes an institutionalized, collective-level perception of appropriateness. In this article, we refine t...

Institutional theory has developed into a leading perhaps the dominant perspective in organizational analysis these days. One prominent point of criticism of institutional theory has been its overly strong emphasis on the macro level. In recent years, however, institutional scholars have begun to vigorously address this issue by expanding the scope...

Recently, scholars have begun to transform and expand institutional theory to a multi-level approach that explicitly incorporates the role of micro-processes. Although the emerging research stream of microinstitutionalism has seen much advocacy and enthusiasm, it is still in its infancy and relatively little consensus exists on what exactly microin...

How do organizations build trust under varying degrees of uncertainty? In this article, we propose that different degrees of uncertainty require different bases of trust. We distinguish between three different forms of trust production (process-based, characteristics-based and institution-based) and develop hypotheses regarding their relative effec...

Empirically-driven policy supports new opportunities by shifting research funding, yielding a cascade of breakthroughs and new firms. Universities patent and connect through TLOs to firms, accelerating economic impact. Protected knowledge is more likely shared; patents are often necessary antecedents to commercialization. Co-evolution of articles a...

This paper explores one specific aspect of institutional entrepreneurship dynamics: the integration of civil society in the process of institutional emergence. We base our analysis on a longitudinal study over a six year period of a particular Non-Governmental Organization (NGO), the ETC Group. Our study shows how a combination of innovative practi...

Data availability is arguably the greatest impediment to advancing the science of science and innovation policy and practice (SciSIPP). This paper describes the contents, methodology and use of the public online COMETS (Connecting Outcome Measures in Entrepreneurship Technology and Science) database spanning all sciences, technologies, and high-tec...

An upper bound is estimated for the magnitude of potential exposure to nano-TiO2 with the purpose of enabling exposure assessment and, ultimately, risk assessment Knowledge of the existing bulk TiO2 market is combined with available nano-TiO2 production data to estimate current nano-TiO2 sources as a baseline. The evolution of nano-TiO2 production...

In our work on biotechnology, it was possible to track a relatively narrowly defined body of knowledge from its origins (largely in universities), to development of inventions represented by patents, to commercial applications in firms and ultimately into goods and service in the market place. Nanobank aims to define a similarly relative narrow but...

Nanobank is a public, digital library comprising data on nanoscience articles, U.S. patents, and federal grants, as well as firms engaged in using nanotechnology commercially. Download the slides at: http://papers.ssrn.com/paper=1027699 Download the audio file at: http://papers.ssrn.com/paper=1029963

Nanobank is a public, digital library comprising data on nanoscience articles, U.S. patents, and federal grants, as well as firms engaged in using nanotechnology commercially.

Nanobank is a public, digital library comprising data on nanoscience articles, U.S. patents, and federal grants, as well as firms engaged in using nanotechnology commercially.

We follow the careers 1981-2004 of 5401 star scientists listed in ISI HighlyCitedSM as most highly cited by their peers. Their number in a US region or a top-25 science and technology (S&T) country significantly increases the probability of firm entry in the S&T field in which they are working. Stars rather than their disembodied discoveries are ke...

We introduce a new hybrid approach to joint estimation of Value at Risk (VaR) and Expected Shortfall (ES) for high quantiles of return distributions. We investigate the relative performance of VaR and ES models using daily returns for sixteen stock market indices (eight from developed and eight from emerging markets) prior to and during the 2008 fi...

This chapter discusses and argues that the financial prospects of a firm are changed by the positive effects of access to knowledge capital on firm performance. This is seen to be especially true of early funding by venture capitalists, and of funding through an initial public offering (IPO). The approach used in this argument adds indicators for k...

Leading economists and economic historians offer case studies and theoretical perspectives that fill a longstanding gap in the existing literature on technology-driven industrial development, discussing the interaction of finance and technological innovation in the American economy since the Second Industrial Revolution. Although technological chan...

During the formative years of biotechnology, ‘star’ bioscientists possessed intellectual capital of extraordinary scientific and pecuniary value. In America and Japan, 35 percent of star bioscientists became involved with firms in commercialising their discoveries (a crucial determinant of success) versus 7 percent in Europe. Did star involvement c...

Contemporary work on the development of status and power structures is reviewed. It is shown that theorists have conceptualized the relationship between these structures in opposite ways. Some have held that the structures tend toward alignment. Specifically, they have held that persons tend to be equally high or low in both structures. Others have...

This paper extends the concept of star scientist to all areas of science and technology. We follow careers 1981-2004 for 5,401 stars as identified in ISIHighlyCited.comSM, using their publication history to locate them each year. The number of stars in a U.S. region or in one of the top-25 science and technology countries generally has a consistent...

The basic competitive model with freely available technology is suited for static industries but misleading as applied to major innovative economies for which development of new technologies equals in magnitude around 10% of gross domestic investment. We distinguish free generic technology from proprietary technologies resulting from risky investme...

In Great Minds In Management Ken G. Smith and Michael A. Hitt have brought together some of the most influential and original thinkers in management. Their contributions to this volume not only outline their landmark contributions to management theory, but also reflect on the process of theory development, presenting their own personal accounts of...

Research on the nanoscale has revolutionized areas of science and has begun to have an impact on, and be impacted by, society and economy. We are capturing early traces of these processes in NanoBank, a large scale, multi-year project to provide a public data resource which will link individuals and organizations involved in creating and using nano...

In science-based industries, world-class scientists drive the most successful firms. These scientists are more likely to follow high-stakes, high-returns R&D strategies instead of more predictable incremental strategies. We develop an options pricing model in which the probability of stock-price jumps increases with knowledge capital. GMM estimates...

America's most innovative firms (with 40%+ of U.S. patents assigned to U.S. entities during 1988-96) participate, often repeatedly, in the Commerce Department's Advanced Technology Program (ATP). Participation significantly increases firms'innovation (patenting) while receiving ATP support versus before and after. Firms generally increase pate...

Metamorphic progress (productivity growth much faster than average) is often driven by Grilichesian inventions of methods of inventing. For hybrid seed corn, the enabling invention was double-cross hybridization yielding highly productive seed corn that was not self-propagating. Biotechnology stemmed from recombinant DNA. Scanning probe microscopy...

This paper examines the value of collecting archival data to evaluate the Advanced Technology Program's (ATP) impact on participants' short- and long-term business success. We use two types of indicators of business success: patenting activity which can be tracked for all participants, and financial market data which is extensive for public firms b...

The number of American firms actively using biotechnology grew rapidly from nonexistent to over 700 in less than two decades, transforming the nature of the pharmaceutical industry and significantly impacting food processing, brewing, and agriculture, as well as other industries. Here we demonstrate empirically that the commercialization of this te...

Commercializing knowledge involves transfer from discovering scientists to those who will develop it commercially. New codes and formulae describing discoveries develop slowly - with little incentive if value is low and many competing opportunities if high. Hence new knowledge remains naturally excludable and appropriable. Team production allows mo...

America's most innovative firms participate in the U.S. Commerce Department's Advanced Technology Program (ATP) those that participated at least once accounted for over 40 percent of U.S. patents to U.S. entities during 1988-1996. Many firms are repeat participants. ATP participation has significant and robust effects on innovation in firms, genera...

Most firms achieve perfective progress, incrementally improving commodities or productivity. But technological progress is concentrated in a few firms achieving metamorphic progress: forming or transforming industries with technological breakthroughs (e.g., biotechnology, lasers, semiconductors, nanotechnology). Unless congruent with incumbents' sc...

Scientist-entrepreneurs prominent in biotech and other high-technology industries view going public not as a cost-effective source of capital but as a cross between selling a now-proven innovation and winning a lottery. Unlike most empirical IPO analyses confined to those firms that go public, we study substantially all the non-public biotech firms...

Breakthroughs with natural excludability are transferred to industry by top academic scientists (stars) working in or with firms. Movement to firms depends on scientists' quality, moving costs, and reservation wage. Scientists' quality, moving costs, trial frequency, interfering academic offers, and productivity of stars already in firms determine...

Commercializing knowledge involves transfer from discovering scientists to those who will develop it commercially. New codes and formulae describing discoveries develop slowly - with little incentive if value is low and many competing opportunities if high. Hence new knowledge remains naturally excludable and appropriable. Team production allows mo...

Biotechnology revolutionized drug discovery in the pharmaceutical industry, making adoption a key determinant of long-term survival in the industry. In the U.S., where and when firms adopted biotechnology was largely determined by location of actively publishing academic “star” bio-scientists. The location of “stars” in Japan had a similar effect b...

Using detailed data on biotechnology in Japan, we find that identifiable collaborations between particular university star scientists and firms have a large positive impact on firms' research productivity, increasing the average firm's biotech patents by 34 percent, products in development by 27 percent, and products on the market by 8 percent as o...

High-tech firms are built much more on the intellectual capital of key personnel than on physical assets, and firms built around the best scientists are most likely to be successful in commercializing breakthrough technologies. As a result, such firms are expected to have higher market values than similar firms less well endowed. In this paper we d...

We examine the relationship between the intellectual capital of scientists making frontier discoveries, the presence of great university bioscience programs, the presence of venture capital firms, other economic variables, and the founding of U.S. biotechnology enterprises during 1976-1989. Using a linked cross-section/time- series panel data set,...

We examine the effects of university-based star scientists on three measures of performance for California biotechnology enterprises: the number of products in development, the number of products on the market, and changes in employment. The `star' concept which Zucker, Darby, and Brewer (1994) demonstrated was important for birth of U.S. biotechno...

This paper is a case study of the transformation in research methods which occurred in a large U.S. pharmaceutical firm as a result of the biotech revolution. This transformation is inconsistent with the hypothesis that technological revolutions make existing firms obsolete and consistent with our wealth-maximization hypothesis that valuable assets...

Based on publications and affiliations of the world's best ''star'' bioscientists, who have been shown elsewhere to be crucial not only in the advance of the science but also in its commercialisation, APEC countries (particularly the USA and Japan) have done substantially better than Europe in producing these scientists, in attracting them from oth...

The economics of recombinant knowledge is a promising field of investigation. New technological systems emerge when strong cores of complementary knowledge consolidate and feed an array of coherent applications and implementations. However, diminishing returns to recombination eventually emerge, and the rates of growth of technological systems grad...

Population ecology models are elegant in form and adequate in describing aggregate data, but poor in telling stories and predicting the location of growth. Fundamentals models emphasizing the variables central to resource mobilization, such as intellectual human capital, can predict where and when biotechnology enterprises emerge and agglomerate. D...

Examines the growth and development of the biotechnology industry, looking at the effects of individual scientists, universities, and federal research support. Specific focus is on the development of the underlying science in biotechnology and the location of those individuals involved in the development of this science. Data used in this analysis...

Using detailed data on California biotechnology, the authors find that the positive impact of research universities on nearby firms relates to identifiable market exchange between particular university star scientists and firms and not to generalized knowledge spillovers. Poisson and two-stage Beckman regressions indicate the number of star-firm co...

Management of successful incumbent firms experience difficulty in recognizing the need for, and effecting change in the firm's technological identity after an externally generated shift in the industry's technological trajectory. Nonetheless, some large pharmaceutical firms have transformed their technological identity in drug discovery from a chem...

Chinese rural industry has grown three times faster than national GDP, surpassing agriculture in size in 1987, and now nearing half of the total Chinese economy. We use a rich, new county-level data set to explore this dramatic growth. We find that a Cobb-Douglas production function explains over 80 percent of across-county variation in 1991 rural...

In contrast to the recently dominant nonrational approach to institutional structure, the authors posit that new institutional structures under most conditions must have net benefits for performance of the organization or they are significantly less likely to be adopted. Over the past 2 decades, the dedicated new biotechnology firm (NBF) emerged as...

In contrast to the recently dominant nonrational approach to institutional structure, the authors posit that new institutional structures under most conditions must have net benefits for performance of the organization or they are significantly less likely to be adopted. Over the past 2 decades, the dedicated new biotechnology firm (NBF) emerged as...

Firms invest differentially in the intellectual human capital required to recognize, evaluate, and utilize technological breakthroughs occurring outside the firm. Such differential investment has been crucial in explaining which incumbent pharmaceutical firms have successfully transformed their technological identities in response to the biotechnol...

The most productive ("star") bioscientists had intellectual human capital of extraordinary scientific and pecuniary value for some 10-15 years after Cohen and Boyer's 1973 founding discovery for biotechnology [Cohen, S., Chang, A., Boyer, H. & Helling, R. (1973) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 70, 3240-3244]. This extraordinary value was due to the unio...

Advance of science and its commercial applications are in a close, symbiotic relationship in the U.S. biotechnology industry. Comparing Japan and the U.S., the structure of the science appears broadly similar, but the organization of the biotechnology industry is quite dissimilar. In the U.S., some 77 percent of new biotechnology enterprises (NBEs)...

This paper applies a rational action/economic sociology approach to the central organizational theory question of whether action is embedded in pre-formed institutions that are relatively cheap in terms of time and energy, or to what extent action becomes embedded in newly constructed institutions that are more costly but perhaps better adapted to...

The most productive (`star') bioscientists possessed intellectual human capital of extraordinary scientific and pecuniary value for some 10-15 yrs after Cohen & Boyer's 1973 founding discovery for biotechnology. This extraordinary value was due to the union of still scarce knowledge of the new research techniques and genius to apply these technique...

We examine how two highly successful new biotechnology firms (NBFs) source their most critical input -- scientific knowledge. We find that scientists at the two NBFs enter into large numbers of collaborative research efforts with scientists at other organizations, especially universities. Formal market contracts are rarely used to govern these exch...

This paper examines the organizational arrangements used by New Biotechnology Firms (NBFs) to source scientific knowledge. Using data from two highly successful NBFs, the paper shows that both firms relied principally on hierarchies and networks to source scientific knowledge; market arrangements were insignificant. Most interesting, each firm had...

We review institutional theory to assess the direction of theory and research on institutional structures and processes. Our primary goal is to suggest an overall frame within which a coherent and interrelated body of theory and research might develop that would address institutional processes underlying stability and change of organizational struc...

We examine the effects of university-based star scientists on three measures of performance for California biotechnology enterprises: the number of products in development, the number of products on the market, and changes in employment. The “star†concept which Zucker, Darby, and Brewer (1994) demonstrated was important for birth of US. biotech...

The biotechnology revolution is of particular interest both for the sociology of science and for industrial organization. Indeed, the closeness of progress in the basic science to applications in industry makes it impossible to understand the development of the industry without understanding the progress of the science and linkages between the two...

Scientists who make breakthrough discoveries can receive above-normal returns to their intellectual capital, with returns depending on the degree of natural excludability, that is whether necessary techniques can be learned through written repons or instead require hands-on experience with the discovering scientists or those trained by them in thei...

Social psychology has separate sociological and psychological approaches that need to be bridged in undergraduate courses. One course format is suggested: Cover a wide variety of theories, then their substantive applications. Two texts, detailed handouts, and demonstrations (including simulations and field problems) help explain and integrate the d...

This paper investigates the diffusion and institutionalization of change in formal organization structure, using data on the adoption of civil service reform by cities. It is shown that when civil service procedures are required by the state, they diffuse rapidly and directly from the state to each city. When the procedures are not so legitimated,...

Hypotheses drawn from the dual economy approach concerning the effects of institutional differentiation of the economy on labor market conditions and labor force characteristics are examined for each of four major taxonomies using data from the NORC General Social Surveys. Mean labor market conditions and labor force characteristics show inconsiste...

Traditional approaches to institutionalization do not provide an adequate explanation of cultural persistence. A much more adequate explanation can be found in the ethnomethodological approach to institutionalization, defining acts which are both objective (potentially repeatable by other actors without changing the meaning) and exterior (intersubj...

Judgmental convergence in autokinetic experiments appears to be produced by expectations of orderliness and stability that are generated by norms in the experimental situation and by the role-identity of the experimenter. The studies reported here attempted pre-exposure disabusal of Ss' implicit expectations of systematic and regular light movement...

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The California Council on Science ,and ,Technology ,gratefully acknowledges ,support from the W. M. Keck Foundation of Los Angeles, CCST's Sustaining Members, and the State of California. The authors are indebted to two talented research assistants Xiaogang Wu, who developed the NRC and ISI university data sets, and Gihong Yi, who d...