Movement of inventors and the effect of knowledge spillovers on spread of innovation: Evidence from patent analysis in high-tech industries

Abstract

Over the past decades, many researchers have attributed growth and evolution of new technologies partly to knowledge spillovers among inventors and corporations. Patents and patent citations are considered as indicators of such knowledge transfer as a citing patent acknowledges the prior knowledge embedded in the cited patent. In this paper, the authors examine the effect of knowledge spillovers on patenting behavior of the inventors. In particular, would an inventor moving from one company to another acquire new knowledge and can this knowledge be transferred implicitly through his/her future innovations? The authors attempt to answer this question by studying the patenting behavior of a sample of inventors in high-tech industries from 1990 to 2005. The study shows a positive relationship between inventors' movements to their ability to create patents in patent classes outside the classes they previously patented in. The paper reports the results of this study for inventors in telecommunications, information technology and biopharmaceutical industries throughout the US.

How R&D Financial Subsidies, Regional R&D Input, and Intellectual Property Protection Affect the Sustainable Patent Output of SMEs: Evidence from China

“…People who hold the view of "incentive effect" think that RDFS can reduce the R&D cost of SMEs, alleviate their financial constraints, and thus stimulate further increase innovation investment [4][5][6]. Because of the externality of technological innovation, new technological knowledge will spread uncontrollably, which leads to the fact that SMEs cannot monopolize all the benefits of innovation, thus reducing the investment scale of R&D activities [22]. In that case, the government's financial subsidies as a supplementary means of market mechanism can reduce the risks of SMEs, improve its anti-risk ability and optimize the allocation of innovation resources to encourage SMEs to increase R&D investment [23].…”

“…Sustainable Patent Output of SMEs: The indicators widely used to measure patent output are generally the number of patent applications, the number of effective patents or the number of authorized patents [22,34,35], among which the number of patent applications represents the number of patents applied by innovative organizations to intellectual property institutions, representing the effort of patent output [14]. The number of effective patents is generally stock, which represents the approved patents by government at the end of the reporting period.…”