Abstract: Building off studies that link inventor mobility and knowledge flow across firms, I argue that inventors with prior organizational experiences are not unconditional sources of outside knowledge. Instead, I posit that individuals working in high-tech industries face continual changes in the need for their skills and therefore move between firms where their backgrounds fit to a varying degree across time. It is only when an inventor’s background fits the technological strategy of the recruiting firm that there will be an increase in the firm’s use of the recruits’ prior ideas, but not otherwise. The study focuses on the laser industry using patent and firm production data and also interviews with those in the industry.

Abstract: This paper examines star scientists and team performance in the context of academic entrepreneurship. We employ a matching model of value creation to estimate complementarities between team leaders and teams. Through an extension of the matching model we explore whether the "penalty" of not being matched efficiently would be bigger for the stars than for their teams. We find that counterfactual pairing of stars with non-star teams creates lower synergies than counterfactual pairing of star-teams to non-star PIs. We take this result as in indication that the contribution of the constellations to overall joint performance is relatively more significant than the contribution of the stars. This study aims to illuminate the microfoundations of performance heterogeneity and draw attention to inherent trade-offs in research team organization.

Abstract: In this study we seek to explain how researchers involved in interdisciplinary R&D projects achieve greater scientific impact and rapid migration to clinical translation based on: their knowledge meshing abilities developed from prior experiences; and the nature of the disciplines represented on the interdisciplinary projects they participate in. Through an analysis of the 124 researchers in the eight Nanomedicine Development Centers (NDCs) funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the United States, this research will assess the effects of experiences scientists have doing interdisciplinary science on the change in the number, impact, and type of their publications. This study contributes to the human capital literature by constructing an approach to assess the implications of interdisciplinary interactions to expand technological frontiers.

Abstract: Returnee entrepreneurs appear to serve as carriers of knowledge from advanced economies to firms in emerging ones. While it is well-documented that firms established by returnees are more innovative than firms established by homegrown ones, we are only beginning to understand processes that account for this finding. In this paper we examine whether returnee entrepreneurs contribute to firm innovation directly by transferring technical knowledge and/or indirectly by transferring organizational routines that foster innovation. Using data from 971 high-tech firms in China, we find that returnee entrepreneurs and returnee employees have substitute effects on firm innovation, a finding that suggests that returnee entrepreneurs primarily bringing in technical knowledge. Our study enhances the understanding of transferability of different types of knowledge through inter-firm mobility.