Inventor Turnover and Knowledge Transfer: The Case of Wind Power Industry

Despite various studies regarding both patentometrics and innovation performance of companies, there are still a lack of discussion for inventor turnover and knowledge transfer among companies. The purpose of this study is to quantitatively analysis the knowledge transferred through inventor turnover. Main companies in the wind power industry were observed to measure inventors transferring among them. A total sample of 32 companies with 3,242 patents and 2,497 inventors were collected to measure the patterns of turnover-inventor. Results show that turnover-inventors invent relatively more patents per inventor and their patents are also with higher average patent cited count. It means that turnover-inventors have more technical knowledge than those remain-inventors, and their turnover activity would leads to the technical knowledge transfer. Turnover patterns in major companies show that many companies with lower transfer-in rate no matter their transfer-out rate higher or not, and they prefer R&D in exploitative innovation. Patents invented by transfer-out inventors disperse company's patent portfolio, thus after these inventor transfer out, the company would become more concentrated on their patent portfolio. This is a prime study that tries to connect the link inventor turnover and knowledge transfer.