Collaborative patents and the mobility of knowledge workers

This study explores the importance of the mobility of knowledge workers (i.e., inventors) for the formation of collaborative patents across different regional contexts. In particular, it looks at a sample of co-inventors in the biotechnology industry in Europe, and estimates the factors that speed up the years needed for collaboration. It tests and finds that collaborations between two separated inventors emerge faster if they were located in the same geographical area in the past, even after controlling for a large number of meaningful proximities between them. Furthermore, the empirical approach suggests that this ‘previous co-location’ premium becomes more valuable when other channels of interaction – social, cognitive, institutional, geographic – are weak or non-existent, and in fostering international technological collaborations.