MM will hold a Public Webinar on the topic “Intra-firm Redeployment of Inventors” on 17 June 2022.
Abstract:
Resource redeployment is the main source of creating competitive and corporate advantages in multibusiness firms. The literature to date is somewhat limited in not directly measuring resources and their actual movement within firms. This study overcomes this limitation by focusing on intra-firm movement of scientific and engineering human resources, i.e., inventors, over time. With patent application data of global semiconductor firms during 2001-2018, we examine which characteristics of inventors and firms prompt or constrain redeployment of inventors, and from where to where they are redeployed. We find evidence that inventor redeployment is driven by less favorable market conditions where technologies from the current invention activities can be potentially used., Further, inventors whose technologies are more fungible and who are less constrained by current intra-firm inventor network and thereby more decomposable and incur less adjustment and coordination costs are more likely to be redeployed.
