ICT, Collaboration, and Science-Based Innovation: Evidence from Bitnet

Does access to information and communication technologies (ICT) increase innovation? We examine this question by exploiting the staggered adoption of BITNET across U.S. universities in the 1980s. BITNET, an early version of the Internet, enabled e-mail-based knowledge exchange and collaboration among academics. After the adoption of BITNET, university-connected inventors increase patenting substantially. The effects are driven by collaborative patents by new inventor teams. The patents induced by ICT are exclusively science-related and stem from ﬁelds where knowledge can be codiﬁed easily. In contrast, we neither ﬁnd an effect on patents not building on science nor on inventors unconnected to universities.

Keywords: ICT, communication, knowledge diffusion, science-based innovation, university-patenting

JEL Classification: H54, L23, L86, O30, O32, O33

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Wernsdorf, Kathrin and Nagler, Markus and Watzinger, Martin, ICT, Collaboration, and Science-Based Innovation: Evidence from Bitnet (October 16, 2020). Max Planck Institute for Innovation & Competition Research Paper No. 20-18, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3713033 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3713033