Does science disrupt technology? Examining science intensity, novelty, and recency through patent-paper citations in the pharmaceutical field

The role of scientific knowledge in advancing technology is widely recognized, but its impact in generating disruptive ideas and catalyzing technological change is less well known. To fill this gap, this study addresses a new research question about whether and how prior scientific knowledge contributes to technological disruptiveness. Specifically, our study focused on the pharmaceutical field, which has a frequent interaction between science and technology, and employed the patent-paper citations to explore the disruptive impact of science on technology. Drawing on the 1,883,593 granted patents in pharmaceuticals and their 1,546,960 cited papers prior to 2018, we found patents with scientific references appear to be more disruptive than those without scientific citations and such effect has gradually pronounced in recent decades, even though technological disruptiveness is generally declining over time. For each granted patent, we further developed three scientific characteristics including science intensity, science novelty and science recency and estimated their effects on technological disruptiveness. The regression analysis showed science intensity and science novelty both have an inverted U-shaped relationship with technological disruptiveness, suggesting intermediate-level novel scientific knowledge input can inspire the generation of disruptive ideas for pharmaceutical technological innovation. While science recency presents a negative association, underlying that recent scientific knowledge could offer advanced theoretical insights that may destabilize the existing technological trajectory. Moreover, collaboration is another important factor in enhancing the disruptive impact of science on technology. Our study contributes to the existing literature by introducing the disruptive impact of science on technology.