The role of early career factors in the formation of serial academic inventors

C. Lawson , Valério Sterzi (1)

1 GREThA - Groupe de Recherche en Economie Théorique et Appliquée

This paper explores the importance of early-career characteristics of academic inventors and how they affect their patenting activity. Using a novel dataset on 555 UK academic inventors, we find that the quality of the first invention is the best predictor for subsequent participation in the patenting process. We further find evidence for a positive training effect whereby researchers who were trained at universities that had already established commercialisation units patent more. In addition, researchers who gained their first patenting experience in industry are able to benefit from stronger knowledge flows and receive more citations than their purely academic peers.

Mots clés: academic; factors; role; inventors

Domaines: Sciences de l'Homme et Société; Economies et finances

C. Lawson, Valério Sterzi. The role of early career factors in the formation of serial academic inventors. Science and public policy, 2014, 41 (4), pp.464-479. ⟨10.1093/scipol/sct076⟩. ⟨hal-01135599⟩