October 16, 2024
12:50
CORE C.035
Laureen de Barsy (Université de Liège)
Invited by Paul Belleflamme
will give a presentation on :
The Role of Talent Acquisition in Technology Leadership and Diversification
Abstract :
This paper aims to track innovation activities around Big Tech acquisitions. To do so, we make use of patent data. Unlike products, which often change names, patented technologies can be tracked as they move across firms. We use this feature of the patent data to assess the impact of Big Tech acquisitions on the development of acquired technologies. But patents expire and technologies evolve. In contrast, the talent of the people who generated the knowledge is an asset that can produce a continuous flow of future knowledge. Therefore, we examine Big Tech's strategy of acquiring not just technologies, but also the talent behind these technologies. We track inventors from firms acquired by Big Tech platforms, and we identify those who continue to innovate for their acquirer post-acquisition. We find that inventors working pre-acquisition on technologies that are closer to their acquirer’s “core” fields are more likely to keep innovating for their acquirer. We extend our analysis by investigating hypothetical explanations for this finding. First, we find that inventors specialising in core technologies are easier for the acquirer to assess, which could partly explain that they are more likely to stay active after acquisition. In a next step [work in progress], we will also test a second potential explanation for this result; namely that Big Tech would be hiring inventors skilled in its core technologies in order to bolster its in-house expertise in these areas.