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How do prolific inventors impact firm innovation in ICT: implications from patent co-inventing network

Prolific inventors not only own higher innovation productivity, but also impact other inventors through innovation networks. This paper contributes to existing literatures by differentiating prolific inventors from non-prolific inventors in the network context, and making an empirical analysis of the effect of prolific inventors. We use the patent filing data from the State Intellectual Property Office of China (SIPO) in investigating the effect of prolific inventors on firm innovation. We use the patents filed by 10 largest Information & Communication Technology firms during 1995–2010 and establish the innovation network with patent co-inventing data. The empirical result shows that prolific inventors positively impact their partners who used to co-invent at least one patent with them. Furthermore, prolific inventors positively impact inventors who do not have a close contact with them. The closer the inventors are to prolific inventors, the more patents they produce. Members are thereby more likely to gather around prolific inventors and formulate intensive clusters. In networks centered by prolific inventors, useful knowledge outweighs redundant knowledge, and high clustering that facilitates knowledge flow is proved to be beneficial; while in networks without prolific inventors, high clustering may not be beneficial as there are less inventors holding advanced knowledge. Policy implications are discussed at the end of this study.