I’ve argued in the past why the free movement of people is so important for innovation, with research highlighting how good ideas disproportionally emerge when people move about and intersect with cultures that they’re not familiar with.

It’s an argument that Harvard’s William Kerr underlines in his recent book The Gift of Global Talent, which reveals how the global movement of talent has contributed to tremendous breakthroughs and transformations in countries around the world.

It’s an impact that Kerr is able to quantify in a recently published paper, which highlights the impact collaborating with researchers overseas has on patenting in American companies.

Collaborative patenting

The study saw a few million micro-records from the USPTO analyzed to explore how effective patents that had multiple contributors from around the world were compared to their more locally produced peers.

Firstly, the study highlights the tremendous growth in global collaborative patents, which have risen from around 1% of US patents in the 1970s to 13% in 2017.  Indeed, once patents involving just a solitary inventor are removed, around 20% of all collaborative patents now have contributors from multiple countries.

These international teams were especially valuable to companies when they attempted to expand their research and innovation efforts into new territories.  It transpired that roughly 70% of the first patents registered by US companies in emerging markets were collaborative in nature, which was higher than in Europe or Japan.

Many of these patents contained contributing researchers from that territory, which gave the American firm the ability to learn about the new location and subsequently construct an R&D presence there that matched their capabilities.

What’s more, the researchers suggest that these global teams are also more effective in producing high quality inventions.  This is especially so when the inventions are registered overseas, as global teams perform significantly better than pure foreign teams.  Such international patents also received more citations, both inside and outside the firm.

Mobile research

Recently, RAND Europe set out to find who are the most well travelled researchers in the world.  They surveyed a few thousand researchers from 109 countries for a recently published paper.  The results revealed a very mobile workforce, with around 75% of respondents having moved to another country for work at some point in their career.

It emerged that senior researchers tend to travel more often, but all believed that visiting or moving to other countries benefited their research.  These overseas experiences had given them new collaborations and support in developing ideas, skills and expertise.

It was not all smooth sailing however, with a number of researchers citing challenges such as family responsibilities, access to funding and a general lack of information about opportunities abroad the the hurdles to jump through to secure them.  These obstacles were especially high for researchers from Africa and Asia.

As the previous research highlighted however, it’s important that these barriers are overcome, as the efficiency, output and career progression of scientists is linked to their ability to move internationally.

To date, Europe has been the most mobile and connected research community, and its researchers have thrived as a result.  There are concerns among researchers about the UK decision to leave the EU however, which coupled with the Trump administration in the US makes the open climate less certain.

“The international movement of researchers enables ideas to spread, collaborations to form and new perspectives to be gained,” the authors say. “The benefits of international movement are felt by all, but obstacles to movement are currently felt disproportionately by some.”