Big Science Beyond Science: the Innovation Impact of Research Infrastructure Procurement

Context Scientific research now requires higher R&D efforts and larger teams with access to sophisticated, costly equipment, often too expensive for individual institutions or countries. For this reason, Large Research Infrastructures (RIs), like the Large Hadron Collider and the International Space Station, play a crucial role in scientific discoveries. These projects epitomize ‘Big Science’, involving international collaborations and substantial, long-term investments to address complex research questions. However, translating their research outputs into societal benefits is slow and uncertain, raising concerns about whether funds should be spent on more immediate-impact initiatives (health, education, and climate change). Recent events, like COVID and the war in Ukraine combined with falling R&D returns, have increased scrutiny on Big Science budgets, prompting evaluations of RIs' measurable and immediate benefits. However, assessing the economic returns of RI investments is complex, due to their public good nature. This project aims to address this challenge and unveil the wider innovation impacts of RIs. Topic To identify the wider economic benefits of RIs' investment, researchers must follow the ‘paper trail’ forming the impact pathways from RIs to (intended and unintended) beneficiaries in the wider economy. The innovation literature relies on patents to capture knowledge flows from research organizations into the economy. However, this approach is challenging for RIs, which commit to open science and rely on other (often uncodified) knowledge appropriation methods. In this context, their procurement activities are the most relevant ‘trail’. RIs contracts are a special form of public procurement with features that should favour innovation, by requiring suppliers to overcome new challenges to produce cutting-edge equipment. Given technology's central role in experiments, RI staff establish strong collaborations with suppliers, facilitating knowledge spillovers. However, RI's motives may not aling with those of their suppliers. RIs focus on making discoveries within budget constraints, not enhancing firms’ performance. These new products often lack immediate commercial application while requiring firms to divert resources from more profitable projects. This raises some critical questions. Can RIs stimulate innovation through their procurement? What mechanisms facilitate this? How do the effects vary by firm type and contract? Are gains spread across businesses and geographies? Do the effects go beyond the suppliers’ boundaries? Are RI contracts different from other forms of public procurement and innovation policy tools? Objectives Leveraging a unique dataset on CERN procurement, and state-of-the-art counterfactual techniques, the project will evaluate the impact of RI procurement on suppliers' innovative performance and the heterogeneity of these effects. The study will investigate the mechanisms through which RI procurement drives suppliers' innovation. It will estimate the extent and spatial footprint of knowledge spillovers beyond suppliers, identifying the channels of knowledge diffusion. It will provide practical policy insights on maximizing the effects of RI procurement, highlight evidence gaps, and offer guidelines for building new evidence. Applications and Benefits Policymakers: The project will offer practical insights on the return to public investment in RIs and guidance on maximizing the wider economic benefits. The findings could inform policies to enhance economic benefits from RI procurement and other demand-led innovation policy tools. RIs: Its findings will help RIs optimize their procurement strategies to maximize their economic benefits while reinforcing their justification to the public beyond their scientific contribution. Firms: Gaining insights into how RI procurement affects suppliers' innovative capacity will help businesses leverage these opportunities to improve their performance.