Agenda

Seminario di ricerca: Knowledge will always get through: inventors, international networks and flows of technological knowledge from Britain to the United States in the interwar deglobalization period.

A cura di Anna Spadavecchia, Reader in the Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship at the University of Strathclyde.
Organizzato nell'ambito delle iniziative del laboratorio NOIS.

Sarà possibile seguire il seminario anche online: https://meet.google.com/qjh-dena-feq

Abstract
This paper examines the role of inventors in the international diffusion of technological knowledge during the deglobalization phase between the two world wars. It is
based on an original dataset of inventors associated with over 8,000 patents granted in the US to British inventions and on qualitative archival records. The findings show that in an international environment characterized by fragmented and nationalistic intellectual property rights, inventors were important channels of technological knowledge through their travels and networks. The agents and mechanisms of such technological knowledge flow were identified by investigating the elusive microfoundations of the inventors’ connectivity. The paper further argues that the interwar period displayed key features comparable to those of the current ‘new techno-nationalism’. These findings have contemporary relevance and suggest that, despite policymakers’ efforts to reverse globalization through protectionist policies, tacit and codified knowledge will cross national borders through the networks of inventors and scientists.

Bio
Anna Spadavecchia is a Reader in the Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship at the University of Strathclyde and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. She is the “Alfred D. Chandler Jr. International Visiting Scholar in Business History” at Harvard Business School, academic year 2022-23. She is the recipient of a BA/Leverhulme Small Grant, 2022-2024.
Anna’s research interests are in the fields of Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Small Business Management. She has worked on various historical and contemporary facets of these topics.