Science and technology relatedness : the case of DNA nanoscience and DNA nanotechnology

The relatedness between knowledge components within the science domain is widely discussed in the economic, innovation, and management literature. The same is true for the technology domain. Yet, the relatedness between knowledge components across these knowledge domains has received considerably less attention. This chapter aims to introduce the concept of knowledge relatedness between science and technology (S&T), which have been disentangled as two distinct corpora. We approach S&T relatedness from two perspectives: content relatedness (with four indicators: similarity, complementarity, commonality, difference) and temporal relatedness. We then test our ideas with novel empirical material from the field of DNA nanoscience and DNA nanotechnology. We find that the relatedness between S&T scores relatively low, which may explain the relative lack of commercial activity in this field. In light of their indirect complementarity, we recommend that funding “bridging areas” could lead to simultaneous progress in S&T.