The Impact of Researcher Diversity on Firms' Patent Application Activity

This paper empirically analyzes the impact of researcher diversity on firms' patent application activity. To account for diversity, we focus on their gender, doctorate degree, research field, and age. For firms' patent application activity, we use the number of patent applications and patent diversity as measured by an international patent classification. A poisson model regression for the count data of patents and ordinary least squares (OLS) regression for patent diversity using Japanese firm level-data show that firms with more female researchers and doctorate degree-holding researchers actively filed for patent applications. However, the relationship between the two groups and firms' patent activity is an inversed-U shape. In addition, the regressions show that firms that employ researchers without research field biases and with a flat age composition filed for patent applications more actively. The results suggest that a rich diversity of researchers in firms advances the research and development (R&D) activity.