Accumulated stock of knowledge and current search practices: The impact on patent quality

- A patent-based framework for studying knowledge search after multiple perspectives
- Link among knowledge stock, technological strategies, knowledge search and quality
- Focalization is stimulated by non-patent references and external scientific actors.
- Patent and non-patent references are related to quality of innovation output.
- Path dependent behavior as to open innovation adoption

The paper suggests a multidimensional patent-based framework that investigates the relationships among accumulated stock of knowledge, current technological strategies, knowledge search practices and quality of innovation output. More specifically, the work intends to examine how the previous open innovation adoption, the recourse to specific technological strategies, the use of external sources of inspiration and the engagement of external actors for knowledge search affect both the market and the technological value of patented inventions. The methodology is applied to 25,583 patents filed by 68 R&D intense bio-pharmaceutical and technology hardware & equipment companies. Results show that focalization leads to technological acknowledgement and is stimulated by the use of non-patent references as sources of inspiration and the engagement of external scientific actors. In general, the use of patent and non-patent references is positively related to the quality of innovation output. Moreover, when companies have largely employed open innovation to accumulate knowledge, they continue to adopt similar practices in current R&D efforts.