Unraveling the Role of Public Researcher Mobilityfor Industrial Innovation

We estimate the relative contribution of mobile scientists who leave academia for the privatesector on the subsequent innovative performance of the firms they join. We use data on thepopulation of Danish firms and their R&D workers for the period 1999-2004 and measureinnovation performance by the (value-adjusted) number of patent applications at theEuropean Patent Office. We compare the efficacy of mobile former university scientists to theeffects of mobile workers hired from other firms as well as immobile workers on theinnovation performance of their employer. Our main result is that mobile university scientistscontribute substantially more to innovation than R&D workers hired from other firms who, inturn, contribute slightly less to industrial innovation than recent university graduates. Bycontrast, immobile workers add little to the innovative activity of their employer. We also findthat the contribution of mobile R&D workers to innovation depreciates fairly rapidly. Thesefindings provide us with three main managerial implications: Firstly, hiring scientists fromuniversities is a way of boosting a firm’s innovative activity. Secondly, because hires fromacademia receive lower wages on average than hires from private sector firms, this impliesthat hiring R&D workers from academia may be a cost-effective way of improving innovationperformance. Thirdly, firms need to take measures in order to further public-privateresearcher interaction to prevent the depreciation of the knowledge stock of their employees....