temporal value of local scientific expertise.

This article investigates how local scientific expertise (LSE) within French NUTS3 jurisdictions influences the speed at which industrial inventors incorporate recent scientific knowledge into patented inventions. Using a large dataset linking over 2.3 million scientific publications from the Microsoft Academic Graph and 359,286 French patents from the PATSTAT database, the study measures the time lag between scientific publication and patent citation, finding that inventors located in regions with higher LSE access relevant scientific discoveries approximately 11 months earlier than those in less expert regions. This temporal advantage varies across technological sectors, being most pronounced in pharmaceuticals and mechanical engineering, and is particularly significant for complex technologies where rapid knowledge absorption is critical. The findings suggest that colocation with scientific experts does not necessarily provide direct knowledge spillovers but rather enhances inventors' ability to identify, evaluate, and exploit recent scientific advances more efficiently, thereby improving innovation outcomes and reducing time-to-market.