Abstract:     As nations strive for scientific and technological autonomy, outlier innovations have emerged as a critical driver of breakthrough technologies and industrial transformation. While scientists are key contributors to innovation, their role as inventors—particularly in generating outlier innovations—remains understudied. This study examined university scientists′ outlier innovations by using Chinese patent data from 1993 to 2018. By constructing a technological landscape through patent classification analysis and employing Logit and Negative Binomial regression models, we investigated the emergence, characteristics, and diffusion patterns of scientists′ outlier innovations. Our research made three theoretical contributions: first, we demonstrated how scientific knowledge and research expertise facilitate the discovery of outlier innovations within the technological landscape; second, we revealed how the fundamental nature of scientific research shapes the novelty of these innovations; and third, we identified the barriers in translating scientific breakthroughs into technological applications. Our findings indicated that university scientists are more likely to generate outlier innovations compared to other inventors, and their innovations demonstrate higher novelty but face greater challenges in gaining widespread adoption. These insights have advanced our understanding of outlier innovations and the science-technology interface, while offering valuable implications for bridging the gap between basic research and technological innovation, particularly for China′s pursuit of high-level scientific and technological self-reliance.

Key words:  scientist innovation, outlier innovation, science technology link, innovation novelty