Recruiting specialized inventors into young organizations
Description
Commercializing nascent technologies may require the expertise of those intimately involved in the original invention, especially when tacit knowledge is essential. Yet the organization home to the original invention may not serve as the best commercialization vehicle, either in the case of a non-profit university or an established firm for whom the innovation may represent a threat to its existing lines of business. For these and other reasons, spinoffs and other startups can play a key role in commercializing technologies if they can attract and retain scientists and engineers with specialized knowledge. Yet intellectual-property laws including those designed to protect trade secrets may hamper the mobility of specialized inventors and the knowledge they carry. In a first project, I exploit Michigan’s inadvertent reversal of its enforcement of employee noncompete covenants to assess the impact of such formal constraints on the mobility of specialists. Subsequent papers will examine noncompetes’ effect on knowledge spillovers as well as the broader career implications for specialists vs. those with more generalized skills.