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A New Space for Biotechnology Innovation?: Comparison of Physical and Virtual Collaboration in Early Drug Discovery1

New technological opportunities and online communication constantly gain importance for knowledge integration and knowledge creation in any innovation-driven environment. The cooperation between firms and individual actors in biotechnology was characteristically organized in local or regional clusters, based on face-to-face communications and strategic temporary linkages to other clusters. However, this archetypal configuration can change with the emerging use of open innovation models such as online research communities. A qualitative case study including an analysis of forums within an open source biomedical research platform portrays how knowledge integration mechanisms, and hence, innovations are implemented in virtual space. In this newly created environment, a number of geographical patterns are inverted: The strong role of physical co-location is partly substituted by enabled online proximity and new opportunities of virtual “prototype-sharing”; the former global pipelines are transformed to local and virtual cross-community pipelines. Yet mechanisms of creating social coherence and stability illustrate noteworthy similarities with “localized capabilities” of regional agglomerations. Eventually, knowledge integration capabilities ensure that the network can operate as a successful knowledge provider.