Research Seminar: Exploration and Exploitation in US Technological Change

Date: 

Monday, May 15, 2023, 10:30am to 11:30am

Location: 

Belfer L1 Weil Town Hall, HKS / Zoom (registration information below)

The Growth Lab Research Seminar series is a weekly seminar that brings together researchers from across the academic spectrum who share an interest in growth and development.

Location: Zoom

Please register in advance. The Zoom webinar is open to the public.

About the Seminar: How do firms and inventors move through knowledge space as they develop their innovations? In this seminar, Vasco M. Carvalho proposes a method for tracking patterns of exploration and exploitation in patenting behaviour in the US for the period since 1920. The exploration measure is constructed from the text of patents and involves the use of Bayesian Surprise to measure how different current patent-based innovations are from existing portfolios. Results indicate that there are distinct life-cycle patterns to firm and inventor exploration. Furthermore, exploration activity is more geographically concentrated than general patenting, but this concentration is centered outside the main hubs of patenting.