Knowledge Recombination Across Technological Boundaries: Scientists vs. Engineers

Marc Gruber, Dietmar Harhoff () and Karin Hoisl ()
Additional contact information
Karin Hoisl: Institute for Innovation Research, Technology Management, and Entrepreneurship, Munich School of Management, Ludwig-Maximilian University Munich, D-80539 Munich, Germany

Management Science, 2013, vol. 59, issue 4, 837-851

Abstract: Building on the seminal work of Thomas J. Allen, we contribute to the emerging microlevel theory of knowledge recombination by examining how individual-level characteristics of inventors affect the breadth of their technological recombinations. Our data set combines information from 30,550 European patents with matched survey data obtained from 1,880 inventors. The analysis supports the view that inventors with a scientific education are more likely to generate patents that span technological boundaries (in our case, 30 broad, top-level technological domains) than inventors with an engineering degree. A doctoral degree is associated with increased recombination breadth for all groups of inventors. The breadth of an inventor's technological recombinations diminishes with increasing temporal distance to his education, but the differences between scientists and engineers persist over time. Our findings provide several new insights for research on inventors, the literature on organizational learning and innovation, and strategy research. This paper was accepted by Lee Fleming, entrepreneurship and innovation.

Keywords: inventors; scientists; engineers; recombinant search; technological breadth; patent classes; innovation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (108)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.1120.1572 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:59:y:2013:i:4:p:837-851

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Management Science from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().