When research professors cannot get the attention of pharmaceutical firms, they turn to start-ups to fund the research. Firms are successfully using academic science as a source of having a competitive advantage. Through this, they are able to identify a breakthrough faster than their competitors, If done properly, it could become huge. Academic science plays a growing role for technology development. Its exploitation by firms has become an important frontier for strategy. Given the volume of academic output, firms home in on the academic discoveries that would give them a leg up via hubs. Hubs are geographic clusters of companies’ R&D labs in specific technological fields. Hubs facilitate the translation of academic science into corporate inventions. The struggle with scientific literature is that its extremely voluminous, fast-changing. Much of it is useless and not reproducible. It is not wise to ignore academic science altogether, as hubs produce a disproportionate amount of useful academic science. The best gems sometimes come from unexpected places. Read More >>