The Role of Early Career Factors in Academic Patenting

Lawson, Cornelia; Sterzi, Valerio

doi:10.2139/ssrn.2221231

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The Role of Early Career Factors in Academic Patenting

Università di Torino Department of Economics Working Paper No. 01/2012

32 Pages Posted: 21 Feb 2013

See all articles by Cornelia Lawson

Cornelia Lawson

The University of Manchester - Alliance Manchester Business School

Valerio Sterzi

University of Bordeaux - GREThA

Date Written: December 30, 2011

Abstract

This paper explores the characteristics of persistent academic inventors and how they are influenced by their personal attributes, PhD institution, and first invention. 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 that were trained at universities that had already established commercialisation units have a higher propensity to patent persistently. In addition, researchers that gained first patenting experience in industry are able to benefit from stronger knowledge flows and receive more citations than their purely academic peers.

Keywords: Academic inventors, University patents, Persistent innovation

JEL Classification: L24, O31, O32, O34

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Lawson, Cornelia and Sterzi, Valerio, The Role of Early Career Factors in Academic Patenting (December 30, 2011). Università di Torino Department of Economics Working Paper No. 01/2012, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2221231 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2221231