Abstract
Knowledge is becoming an increasingly important determinant of the performance of firms. This is particularly true in the biotechnology based sectors. In spite of this increased importance of knowledge we know very little about the nature and properties of the knowledge-base of firms. In this paper the problem of the dynamics of the creation and utilization of knowledge is discussed first at a general level and then by means of some techniques that can be used to map and measure the knowledge-base of firms. The knowledge-base (KB) of a firm can be defined as the collective knowledge that the firm uses to achieve its productive purposes. The collective character derives from the fact that the KB results from the knowledge of individual members of the firm and by their interactions, as determined by the firm’s organizational structure. Thus the KB includes all the types of knowledge that are required to obtain the firm’s final products. The methods described in this paper are based on the study of the patents obtained by firms. Thus they are approximate methods in that they only represent the scientific and technological components of the KB. This is a good approximation in the case of highly knowledge dependent sectors such as the biotechnology based ones. The methods used fall essentially into two groups: on the one hand it is possible to obtain a graphic representation of the knowledge-base of a firm by means of lexicographic analysis, a scientometric technique, and, on the other hand some properties of the KB can be defined and measured based on patent statistics. For example, we can measure the degree of specialization, the scope and the coherence of the KB and study the influence of these properties on the firm performance. The two sets of methods and some results obtained by means of them will be described in the paper. The techniques described here allow to analyse the impact of the KB on a number of aspects of the behavior of the firm. For example, we expect that the KB has to change in order to enable the firm to change strategy. Likewise, other aspects of firm behavior such as mergers and acquisitions, divestitures and the formation of innovation networks are likely to be affected by the KB of the participating firms.References
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