Monday, April 21, 2014 | 12:30pm - 2:00pm | Room 335, HSBC Business School Building

Abstract

Innovation has been characterized as a process of knowledge recombination. However, little is known about the role of strategic human capital in innovation, although research has suggested that strategic human capital lays the micro-foundation of competitive advantage. I submit that differential human capital would bring different knowledge into the knowledge recombination process. I unpack the concept of strategic human capital into two dimensions: inventor status and inventor tenure. On the inventor status dimension, I suggest that having either star inventors or green-hand inventors would enhance innovation quality. On the inventor tenure dimension, longer average tenure of inventors would decrease innovation quality. In addition, I suggest that inventor tenure would negatively moderate the effect of star inventors, but positively moderate the effects of green-hand inventors. Hypotheses were tested using data from the US. pharmaceutical industry and were supported except the hypothesis of inventor tenure. Implications are discussed.