Human Capital, Social Collaboration, and Patent Renewal Within U.S. Pharmaceutical Firms

Abstract

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.