Mind the gap: capturing value from basic research: boundary crossing inventors and partnerships

We study the process of how firms access basic research and translate this into applied research. Drawing on basic research firms develop higher quality technologies and develop these technologies more intensely internally. Critical in this process are boundary crossing inventors – inventors that access basic research by active involvement in basic research projects and subsequent involvement in the development of more applied technologies. Nevertheless, these boundary crossing inventors need to be embedded in a complementary institutional relation between the firm and the organization developing the basic research to have an effect. We examine this process through IMEC, an important basic research organization in nano-electronics, with the explicit mission to bridge the gap between basic research done at universities and applied research developed by industry.