Explaining the balance between publications and patents as outputs from public-private collaborative R&D: An empirical study on French data.

R&D collaboration between firms and public research organizations (PROs) is considered a key component of national systems of innovation. A direct benefit from these collaborations is the production of new scientific and technological knowledge, which is disseminated essentially through publications and patents. In this paper, we empirically address the issue of the economic factors shaping the publishing and patenting patterns in public-private R&D collaborative settings by drawing on the data from a survey conducted among laboratories of the largest French public research organizations in the chemistry and life sciences fields. We consistently find that consortia collaborations tend to discard patents while they are supported by the development of new product innovations. Moreover, the proportion of post-docs in the laboratory’s workforce is correlated with more patents than publications. This result is original and highlights the key role played by post-docs for the production of commercially relevant knowledge in French public-private R&D partnerships. It stresses the need for more explicit human resource management tools and policies directed towards this fraction of the knowledge production workforce.