"Novel early stage ideas face uncertainty on the expertise needed to elaborate them, which creates a need to circulate them widely to find a match. Yet as information is not excludable, shared ideas may be stolen, reducing incentives to innovate. Still, in idea-rich environments inventors may...

Patents have long been regarded as the 'gold standard' of intellectual property protection. In "Little patents and big secrets: managing intellectual property", Anton and Yao (2004) call this traditional view into question by finding that firms keep their most important innovations secret. This...

Based on an established theoretical framework of the drivers of inventive performance, the so-called KSAO (Knowledge, Skills, Abilities, and Other) factors, this paper seeks to explain empirically the performance of inventors throughout their careers. We combine survey information spanning the...

Collaboration over distance is difficult to maintain in innovation projects which require a great deal of regional collaboration. However, patent documents reveal that a number of inventor teams are able to overcome long distances. Earlier literature started to investigate factors, which...