Converting inventions into innovations to address cancer grand challenges: The role of scientific and digital search intensity
Lorenzo Ardito, Angelo Natalicchio, Antonio Messeni Petruzzelli, Manlio Del Giudice
kHUB post date: May 21, 2024
Originally published: October 10, 2023 (PDMA JPIM • Vol 41, Issue 2 • March 2024)
Read time: 60 minutes
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The present study seeks to shed further light on what favors the conversion of inventions into innovations in for-profit firms and to advance our understanding of how to tackle cancer grand challenges (CGCs). Specifically, following the literature on knowledge search and recombination, we analyze whether and how cancer-related inventions developed through an intense adoption of scientific knowledge (scientific search intensity) result in (i) a higher number of approved drugs and (ii) a shorter approval time for new drugs. Notably, while the role of science with regard to technological development has been widely studied, the extent to which science-based solutions relate to new product introduction, especially in terms of coping with grand challenges such as approved cancer drugs, is less known. Furthermore, considering the digitization of (health) R&D and the role of information and communication technologies (i.e., digital technologies) to address grand challenges, we examine whether and how cancer-related inventions developed through an intense adoption of digital knowledge (digital search intensity) directly affect the extent and speed of cancer drug approval, as well as whether interaction effects between scientific and digital search intensity exist. We develop hypotheses that we test on a sample of 65,861 cancer-related patents owned by 139 for-profit firms, collected from the USPTO Cancer Moonshot Patent Data. These have a priority date between 1990 and 2010, and have led to 1035 approved drugs. Results reveal that scientific search intensity is not associated with the number of different drugs developed from a single cancer-related invention but is associated with the speed at which the invention leads to a newly approved drug. Digital search intensity appears not to directly affect cancer drug approval, but it lessens the effects of scientific search intensity, thus pointing to a limit of digitization in cancer R&D and innovation processes.
Practitioner points
- Increasingly relying on scientific knowledge during the front-end innovation process makes it possible to reduce the time required to exploit an invention through the new product development route.
- Intense digital search does not seem to directly favor the conversion of inventions into new products and does not add to the benefits of an intense scientific search, calling managers to be more aware of the role of digital search, particularly in association with scientific search.
- Digital search that supports scientific research to address CGCs may require more experimentation to be truly effective in increasing the number of drugs that can be developed as well as the time-to-approval of a cancer drug.
- Policy actions and initiatives should be devoted to helping reconcile science and digitization, as their interplay is strengthening, but the benefits from their interaction seem yet to come.