  Generally, open innovation is a lucrative research topic within industries
relying on innovation, such as the pharmaceutical industry, which are also
known as knowledge-intensive industries. However, the dynamics of drug
pipelines within a small-medium enterprise level in the global economy remains
concerning. To reveal the actual situation of pharmaceutical innovation, we
investigate the feature of knowledge flows between the licensor and licensee in
the drug pipeline based on a multilayer network constructed with the drug
pipeline, global supply chain, and ownership data. Thus, our results
demonstrate proven similarities between the knowledge flows in the drug
pipeline among the supply chains, which generally agrees with the situation of
pharmaceutical innovation collaborated with other industries, such as the
artificial intelligence industry.
