THE EFFECT OF INVENTOR MOBILITY AND COMPANY SIZE ON INVENTOR PERFORMANCE IN THE US TELECOM INDUSTRY

摘要

Movement of engineers and scientists across companies facilitates interactions between the firm and the inventors joining the company. While these interactions increase the innovative performance of the organization in terms of new patents, the effect of the inventor mobility on their own performance is not well understood. In this paper, we aim to provide a quantitative analysis of the effect of career moves on inventor performance. In addition to that, we also analyze how the company size can play a major role in inventor performance. We study the US telecommunication industry patents from 1990 to 2005 and show that the patent production rate of the inventors declines considerably with increased number of moves across companies. Additionally, the rate of decline is more prominent in case of inventors moving among larger companies as compared to those moving among medium/small size companies. However, with each move, the inventors seem to gain additional technical knowledge: the more the number of career moves, the more the breadth of knowledge gained. The paper discusses the implications of these effects on innovation and R&D management.