Integration of Indian inventor networks in global value chains in pharmaceuticals industry

The network approach of value chain analysis examines the role and centrality of various actors and their interrelationships with other actors, besides establishing the role of external linkages in this process. This paper tries to combine the effect of research networks on the geographic dispersion of innovative activity in the Indian pharmaceutical industry. We use activity-wise data from USPTO's patents to establish the level of integration of Indian innovative firms in the pharmaceutical global value chain. Using Tobit analysis, we examine the nature of the collaborative pattern of firms and establish whether this pattern of the inventor network level translates to integration into global networks in terms of geographic dispersion. We analyse the geographic dispersion of inventor networks as a function of the characteristics of the innovative actors that coordinate their inventive work. We show the level of integration of Indian innovative firms in the pharmaceuticals global value chain and assess the structure of these research networks. This helped contextualize firms' roles by contrasting them with other institutional types. The level of integration of Indian firms is low in terms of the geographic dispersal of innovation networks, while the private universities and public research centres are more geographically dispersed.