The job market for advanced researchers in the life sciences has been transformed. In sharp contrast to earlier eras, private-sector employment has become attractive for top postdoctoral students in molecular biology, genetics, and other fields. Biotechnology companies such as Genentech and Millennium Pharmaceuticals have come into their own as commercial enterprises, and each year recruit an increasing number of biologists from a variety of fields. Established pharmaceutical firms such as Merck and Pfizer have transformed their workforces: a greater share of their overall research workforce comprises scientists with biology backgrounds, and these researchers occupy positions of increasing importance within their firms.

Behind these trends, more subtle changes are at work. An increasing number of private firms are offering researchers the opportunity to remain engaged in public science. Continued involvement with the scientific community is achieved by offering support, including providing researchers flexibility in choosing their projects, subsidizing their participation in scientific conferences, and rewarding publication of research results in the top scientific journals.

One of the most striking features of the current job market for biologists is that firms vary so much in their adoption of such "science friendly" practices. At one extreme, Millennium Pharmaceuticals expects researchers to not only maintain an active interest in the scientific literature, but to build their personal scientific reputations. The company even provides financial incentives to encourage this goal. Compare this with other pharmaceutical firms that maintain secrecy about the researcher activity by prohibiting publication of scientific results and discouraging participation at conferences. In an important Harvard Business Review article by Rebecca Henderson, a senior research executive recounts, "Of course, people are free to publish if they want, but in general I haven't encouraged it. After all, the effort that goes into writing a paper could be employed to search for new drugs."

Why do some profit-oriented firms allow researchers to spend so much of their time and attention on scientific results that may not directly enhance the commercialization of the firm’s products and processes?

The first potential explanation for the adoption of a science-friendly research environment is that such practices are, indeed, productive. In order to be the first firm to take advantage of a new scientific discovery, one must have researchers who are contributing scientific experts in that field. Because of patent protection, profits in the pharmaceutical industry depend in part on "getting there first." Encouraging researchers to spend some share of their time engaged in basic, nonproprietary science pays for itself by allowing the firm to access the latest scientific findings in particular fields. This view is consistent with the influential theory of "absorptive capacity" by Wesley Cohen and Dan Levinthal. According to this theory, science-friendly research environments will tend to be winners in the long run by dint of their higher research productivity.

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National Bureau of Economic Research - one of the leading economic research organization in the United States. Its interests include health care and labor studies.