New Ideas in Invention.pdf

NBER WORKING PAPER SERIES NEW IDEAS IN INVENTION Mikko Packalen Jay Bhattacharya Working Paper 20922 /papers/w20922 NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138 January 2015 A previous version of this paper was circulated under the title Words in Patents: Research Inputs and the Value of Innovativeness in Invention. We thank Darius Lakdawalla, Dana Goldman, Alan Garber, Richard Freeman, John Ham, Josh Graff Zivin, David Blau, Joel Blit, Subhra Saha, Tom Philipson, Neeraj Sood, Pierre Azoulay, Grant Miller, Jeremy Goldhaber-Fiebert, and Gerald Marschke for their comments on early drafts of this paper and for their encouragement. We also thank seminar participants at the Harvard Business School, Stanford School of Medicine, University of Guelph, and especially Bruce Weinbergs working group on innovation and science at the NBER for excellent feedback. Despite all this help, the authors are responsible for all errors in the paper. We acknowledge financial support from the National Institute on Aging grant P01-AG039347. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer- reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications. © 2015 by Mikko Packalen and Jay Bhattacharya. All rights reserved. Short sections of text, not to exceed two paragraphs, may be quoted without explicit permission provided that ful