Why Do For-Profit Firms Adopt Open Science?-Assessing the Impact of Founder Imprinting, Niche Crowding and Competitive Influence.

Recent studies have observed the spread of open science in the private sector and identified some benefits of the strategy. However, the social conditions that have motivated the adoption and diffusion of open science among for-profit firms remain under-explored. This paper analyzes cultural and structural forces that have influenced biotechnology firms' adoption of the strategy. I model the probability that a firm adopts open science as contingent upon (i) the normative predispositions of academically trained founders, (ii) the structural characteristics of a firm's technological niches and (iii) the influence of structurally equivalent competitors. Probit analysis is performed on the probability that a firm would publish research findings in scientific journals within five years of its founding, using a sample of U.S. biotechnology firms that filed IPO prospectuses with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission between 1972 and 2002. The results show that founders' professional training and competitive influence both have a positive impact on adoption, while dense (crowded) technological niches reduce the likelihood that a firm would pursue the open science strategy. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]