The Future. Big Tech is credited for having creative ideas, but a recent study suggests that startups generate much more innovation than the large companies who capitalize on them. If we truly prize innovation, we should make things easier for startups — not tech giants.
Patent discrepancyA paper in The Strategic Management Journal measured the innovation of startups vs. large corporations.
The paper studied patent citations in the solar energy sector from 1976 to 2019, measuring the power and novelty of a patented idea by the number of times it was cited by later patents.
Startups outclassed large companies by this metric, accounting for about 12% of patents filed but 22.3% of future citations.
After two to three years, startup ideas far outpace Big Tech’s in citations, nearly doubling established companies’ citation rates nine years out.
1% inspiration, 99% corporationWhile startups have most of the creative ideas, large companies are in a position to capitalize on them and scale them up. It’s not fraud to tweak an idea and sell it without compensating the idea’s originator — unethical though it may be.
But if all Big Tech really does is optimize for growth and profit, maybe we don’t have to cut them so many breaks.
The post Startups are responsible for Big Tech’s innovation appeared first on TheFutureParty.