Author(s): Mendonça, Sandro ; Silva, Eduardo ; Damásio, Bruno
Date: 2025
Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10362/187199
Origin: Repositório Institucional da UNL
Subject(s): Big Tech; Digital platforms; Research; Publications; Dynamic capabilities; Technological diversification; Management Information Systems; Information Systems; Communication; Economics and Econometrics; Library and Information Sciences; Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law
Mendonça, S., Silva, E., & Damásio, B. (2025). The knowledge base of Big Tech: Research as a source of informational leadership by the dominant US digital platforms. Telecommunications Policy, 49(7), Article 102908. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.telpol.2025.102908 --- %ABS1% --- This work was supported by national funds through FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia), under the project - UIDB/04152/2020 - Centro de Investigação em Gestão de Informação (MagIC)/NOVA IMS) (https://doi.org/10.54499/UIDB/04152/2020).
Investing in research is an essential element in any business model in the digital age. At the forefront of this approach to innovation are digital platforms, which have resources and development strategies that enable them to enter and transform many markets outside their core activities. This work assembles a wealth of evidence to show that the omnipresence of Big Tech has now reached the science & technology sector in a significant way. We analyse the publication growth, influence, themes and partnership profiles of Big Tech (Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft). In a process that came alive in the 2000s, it is by the 2010s that these giant US-based ICT-services companies move fast and publish things. They show strong dynamic capabilities in “Physical Sciences” and “Computer Science”. Co-authorships reveal links to American universities, mostly in California. Internationally, there is a strong preference for research collaboration with China, with the UK coming second. Results provide a better appreciation of Big Tech's multidimensional footprint and how the science & technology ecosystem is evolving and causing new policy pressures in the 21st century.
