In knowledge we trust: Learning-by-interacting and the productivity of inventors

Matteo Tubiana, Ernest Miguelez and Rosina Moreno

Research Policy, 2022, vol. 51, issue 1

Abstract: Innovation rarely happens through the actions of a single person. Innovators source ideas while interacting with peers at different levels and intensities. With a dataset of disambiguated inventors from 1980 to 2010 in European metropolitan areas, we assess the influence of their interactions with co-workers, organizations’ colleagues, and geographically co-located peers on their productivity. By adding many fixed effects to control for unobserved heterogeneity, we uncover the importance of metropolitan areas knowledge for inventors’ productivity, with firms and co-workers’ network knowledge being less relevant. When the complexity and quality of knowledge are accounted for, the picture changes: proximate, social interactions become central.

Keywords: Inventors’ productivity; Stock of knowledge; Interactions; Multilevel (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O18 O31 O33 O52 R12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Related works:
Working Paper: In knowledge we trust: learning-by-interacting and the productivity of inventors (2021)
Working Paper: In knowledge we trust: learning-by-interacting and the productivity of inventors (2020)
Working Paper: In knowledge we trust: learning-by-interacting and the productivity of inventors (2020)
Working Paper: In knowledge we trust: learning-by-interacting and the productivity of inventors (2020)
Working Paper: In knowledge we trust: learning-by-interacting and the productivity of inventors (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:respol:v:51:y:2022:i:1:s0048733321001840

DOI: 10.1016/j.respol.2021.104388

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