Comparing the Contribution of Differently Motivated Scientists: Pasteur vs. Bohr

In order to identify the effect of prevailing academic entrepreneurship on scientific performance, this paper compared the contributions of entrepreneurial scientists with those of conventional academics. Relying on the $B!H (Bquadrant model) $B!I (B (Stokes 1997), the results of statistical analysis applied to a sample of 1957 scientific papers published by 66 scientists active in the advanced materials research in Japan confirm that whereas the papers by Bohr scientists demonstrate a good citation performance, those by Pasteur scientists do not perform as well; compared to Bohr scientists, Pasteur scientists show higher propensity to leverage citation impact toward furthering the scientific frontier . The findings suggest that whereas academic entrepreneurship exerts a rather negative influence on scientific productivity on average, entrepreneurial scientists make a larger contribution to furthering the scientific frontier by not relying on the conventional research traditions of the scientific community. The paper provides policy implications for science policy makers, scientists and university administrators.