A Study of Firm-Switching of Inventors in Big Tech Using Public Patent Data

Complex systems research and network science have recently been used to provide novel insights into economic phenomena, such as patenting behavior and innovation in firms. Studies have found that increased inventor mobility, through firm switching or transitioning, is associated with higher overall productivity. This paper proposes a structural study of transitioning inventors and their role in patent co-authorship networks within a cohort of highly innovative and economically influential companies, namely the five Big Tech firms (Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta) during the post-recession period (2010–2022). Using Big Tech patent data, we empirically investigate three research questions. Our findings indicate that transitioning inventors exhibit a higher degree of centrality than average, and their removal results in greater network fragmentation than expected by chance. The transition rate over the 12-year study period was highest between 2015–2017, indicating non-trivial shifts in the Big Tech innovation ecosystem during that period. We also find moderate evidence of increased estimated impact, on average, of patents co-authored by an inventor following transition, compared to those co-authored before transition.