Resource Allocation Solutions for Star Inventors and Their Turnover Implications

We examine how firms in innovation-intensive industries allocate their star inventors to R&D practices, and how such resource allocation decisions affect individual likelihood of turnover. We elaborate on two key features of corporate inventors, namely their heterogeneous contribution to firms’ performance and their mobility, to advance the literature on resource allocation. By drawing on data on European inventors’ patenting activity, we find that firms face a higher incentive to allocate their star inventors to those R&D practices enabling innovation and commercialization of science, yet the allocation to these practices has both positive and negative implications for turnover. The contrasting effects, explained by the conflicting logics leading firms and inventors to science, suggest a complex interplay between resource allocation and retention ability over stars.