Human Capital, Social Collaboration, and Patent Renewal Within U.S. Pharmaceutical Firms
研究了美国制药企业中发明人的人力资本和协作特征如何影响专利续期决策，发现明星发明人、更多合作者及跨地域协作能显著提高专利续期概率。
Human capital has received much attention as the microfoundation for a firm to achieve competitive advantage. For knowledge-intensive firms, inventors’ human capital plays an important role in developing intellectual assets such as patents. Little research, however, has explored how inventors’ human capital influences the firm’s decisions of which patent to maintain or to abandon. This study investigates the effects of inventors’ human capital and collaboration characteristics on patent renewal decisions in the context of U.S. pharmaceutical firms. The results show that having star inventors on the inventor team, having more coinventors, and having inventors from multiple locations significantly increase chances of patent renewal. In addition, having more coinventors positively moderates the effects of star inventors on patent renewal. Implications for research are discussed.