Document de travail

Young, Restless and Creative:Openness to Disruption and Creative Innovations

Daron Acemoglu et Ufuk Akcigit

Résumé

This paper argues that openness to new, unconventional and disruptive ideas has a Örstorder impact on creative innovationsó innovations that break new ground in terms of knowledge creation. After presenting a motivating model focusing on the choice between incremental and radical innovation, and on how managers of di§erent ages and human capital are sorted across di§erent types of Örms, we provide cross-country, Örm-level and patent-level evidence consistent with this pattern. Our measures of creative innovations proxy for innovation quality (average number of citations per patent) and creativity (fraction of superstar innovators, the likelihood of a very high number of citations, and generality of patents). Our main proxy for openness to disruption is manager age. This variable is based on the idea that only companies or societies open to such disruption will allow the young to rise up within the hierarchy. Using this proxy at the country, Örm or patent level, we present robust evidence that openness to disruption is associated with more creative innovations.

Mots-clés

corporate culture; creative destruction; creativity; economic growth; entrepreneurship; individualism; innovation; openness to disruption;

Référence

Daron Acemoglu et Ufuk Akcigit, « Young, Restless and Creative:Openness to Disruption and Creative Innovations », 1 février 2014.

Voir aussi

Publié dans

1 février 2014