Inventing modern invention: the professionalization of technological progress in the US
- http://econ.geo.uu.nl/peeg/peeg2408.pdf
- Matte Hartog, Andres Gomez-Lievano, Ricardo Hausmann, Frank Neffke
We study how the US transitioned from traditional craftsmanship-based to today’s science-based innovation. To do so, we digitize half a million pages of patent yearbooks that de- scribe inventors, organizations and technologies on over 1.6M patent and add demo- graphic information from US census records and information on corporate research activities from large-scale repeated surveys on industrial research labs.
The craftmanship-based invention was rapidly replaced by “social innovation” based on industrial research labs.