Clean Technology-Innovation in Deutschland: Humankapitalakkumulation bei heterogenen Wissensinputs
Final Report Abstract
Human capital is an important driver of invention. Existing research in invention and technology management has looked at a wide variety of creative and cognitive skills, personality traits (e.g. openness for new experiences, positive risk attitude), knowledge resources acquired by formal education or on-the-job training as well as motivations and values that form the human capital of highly creative and innovative workers. However, the importance of these drivers for inventive success may differ depending on whether inventors are active in more traditional, focused technology fields (such as mechanical elements) or in emerging and cross-sectional technology fields that draw upon basic rather then applied research as well as on knowledge from a large number of different fields. Examples are clean technology, or nanotechnology. Identifying critical human capital resources that drive technological progress is a substantial challenge for company leaders, human resource decision makers, policy makers, as well as educational strategists. This is in particularly so, since increasingly fast technology life cycles leave little time to correct false human capital decisions. This project seeks to contribute to a better understanding of the value of different types of human capital for technological invention in the three exemplary fields clean technology, nanotechnology, and mechanical elements. The focus of this project is on (1) the identification of human capital resources driving inventive productivity in general and in the above-mentioned three technology fields in particular, and (2) the valuation of these productivity drivers by human resource decision makers who are involved in the recruitment and selection of critical R&D workers. These objectives are achieved by implementing two large-scale surveys. In the course of the first survey, we collect information about human capital such as creative skills, personality traits, networks and careers of 1,932 German inventors active in the three aforementioned technology fields. In the course of the second survey, we collect survey and experimental data from human resource (HR) decision makers employed with 197 German high tech firms and from 90 technology experts active in the technology fields clean technology and mechanical elements. The experimental part of the survey assesses hiring preferences for R&D workers who are critical for the success of a major innovation project. We use a choice-based conjoint experiment, which asks respondents to provide résumé evaluations for fictitious candidates. Both surveys link survey/experimental data with the patenting histories of the technology experts between the years 1978 and 2010 from official and publicly available sources. Results show that human capital resources, in particular so far disregarded factors such as risk attitude, openness to new experiences, extraversion, divergent thinking ability, and cognitive skills are important drivers of individual inventor productivity. The experimental data further reveal that HR decision makers prefer candidates with technology specific patenting experience, an engineering background, analytical thinking skills, and a strong orientation to develop path-breaking technologies. As expected, no “one size-fits-all” candidate exists that is equally preferred in both technology fields. HR decision makers in clean technology, for instance, prefer environmental specialists and attach special importance to a candidate’s orientation towards environmental concerns and sustainability. Interestingly, the human capital factors, which turned out to be the most important drivers of individual inventor productivity (results of study 1) are not necessarily those valued highest by HR decision makers (results of study 2).
Publications
- (2015), Candidate Screening for the Recruitment of Critical R&D Workers: A Report and Preliminary Results with Evidence from Experimental Data from German High Tech Firms, ZEW Discussion Paper 15-002, Mannheim
Frosch, K., Harhoff, D., Hoisl, K., Steinle, C., Zwick, T.
- (2015), Clean Technology Innovations in Germany: Human Capital Accumulations under Heterogeneous Knowledge Inputs – Data and Methodology Report
Frosch, K., Harhoff, D., Hoisl, K., Steinle, C., Zwick, T.
- (2015), Humankapitalakkumulation von deutschen Erfindern in Schlüsseltechnologien
Frosch, K., Hoisl, K., Steinle, C., Zwick, T.
- (2015), Individual determinants of inventor productivity: Report and preliminary results with evidence from linked human capital and patent data, ZEW Discussion Paper 15-001, Mannheim
Frosch, K., Harhoff, D., Hoisl, K., Steinle, C., Zwick, T.
- (2015), The Power of Individual-Level Drivers of Inventive Performance, ZEW Discussion Paper 15-080, Mannheim
Zwick, T., Frosch, K., Hoisl, K., Harhoff, D.
- Attenuation Bias when Measuring Inventive Performance. Economics of Innovation and New Technology, Volume 26, 2017 - Issue 3, 195-201
Zwick, T., Frosch, K.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1080/10438599.2016.1155270)
