Lee Fleming
Biographic Data
| ID | 3611203 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Lee Fleming |
| GIVEN NAMES | Lee |
| FAMILY NAME | Fleming |
| SIGNATURE | FLEMING L |
| AFFILIATIONS | Harvard University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1363-4478 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 0 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 12 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2001 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 0 |
Startups, Unicorns, and the Local Influx of Inventors
We provide evidence that an influx of technical human capital improves regional entrepreneurship, both by increasing firm entry and reducing entrepreneurial failure. The results also indicate negative externalities upon lowtech and competing industries: an influx of inventors in a county shifts the locus of venture capital investment away from low-tech startups to high-tech startups and moreover towards new ventures in the same sector as those in…
The Unintended Impact of R&D Tax Credits on Innovative Search
Research and development tax credits often aim to increase investment in experimentation, hoping that firms invent fundamentally new technologies that in turn generate positive spillovers. Since most policies require that companies make profits in order to claim credits, they might also shift investments towards less risky refinement and exploitation. Following the availability of credits, we demonstrate that firms do not experiment but deepen in…
Philanthropic supported innovation: Trends, areas, and impact
Philanthropy provides substantial support for science and research—does it do the same for technology and invention? We match patenting outcomes in the United States with philanthropic organizations as listed in the Candid database and find that at least 0.2% of U.S. patenting since 1976 received philanthropic support. After matching philanthropic patents to non-philanthropic patents based on technology, time, and the number of inventors, we find…
Heterogeneous Innovation over the Business Cycle
Schumpeter (1939) claims that recessions are periods of “creative destruction,” concentrating innovation that is useful for the long-term growth of the economy. However previous research finds that standard measures of firms’ innovation, such as R&D expenditures or raw patent counts, concentrate in booms. We argue that these measures do not capture shifts in firms’ innovative search strategies. We contemplate firms’ choice between exploration ver…
The FinFET Breakthrough and Networks of Innovation in the Semiconductor Industry, 1980-2005: Applying Digital Tools to the History of Technology
The "FinFET" design for transistors, developed at the University of California, Berkeley, in the 1990s, represented a major leap forward in the semiconductor industry. Understanding its origins and importance requires deep knowledge of local factors, such as the relationships among the lab's principal investigators, students, staff, and the institution. It also requires understanding this lab within the broader network of relationships that compr…
Why the Valley Went First: Aggregation and Emergence in Regional Inventor Networks
Small Worlds and Regional Innovation
Small-world networks have attracted much theoretical attention and are widely thought to enhance creativity. Yet empirical studies of their evolution and evidence of their benefits remain scarce. We develop and exploit a novel database on patent coauthorship to investigate the effects of collaboration networks on innovation. Our analysis reveals the existence of regional small-world structures and the emergence and disappearance of giant componen…
Brokerage, Boundary Spanning, and Leadership in Open Innovation Communities
What types of human and social capital identify the emergence of leaders of open innovation communities? Consistent with the norms of an engineering culture, we find that future leaders must first make strong technical contributions. Beyond technical contributions, they must then integrate their communities in order to mobilize volunteers and avoid the ever-present danger of forking and balkanization. This is enabled by two correlated but distinc…
Complexity, networks and knowledge flow
Science as a map in technological search
A large body of work argues that scientific research increases the rate of technological advance, and with it economic growth. The precise mechanism through which science accelerates the rate of invention, however, remains an open question. Conceptualizing invention as a combinatorial search process, this paper argues that science alters inventors' search processes, by leading them more directly to useful combinations, eliminating fruitless paths…
Technology as a complex adaptive system: Evidence from patent data
Recombinant Uncertainty in Technological Search
While the course of technological change is widely accepted to be highly uncertain and unpredictable, little work has identified or studied the ultimate sources and causes of that uncertainty. This paper proposes that purely technological uncertainty derives from inventors' search processes with unfamiliar components and component combinations. Experimentation with new components and new combinations leads to less useful inventions on average, bu…
No prominent works on this page.
Technology as a complex adaptive system: Evidence from patent data
Recombinant Uncertainty in Technological Search
While the course of technological change is widely accepted to be highly uncertain and unpredictable, little work has identified or studied the ultimate sources and causes of that uncertainty. This paper proposes that purely technological uncertainty derives from inventors' search processes with unfamiliar components and component combinations. Experimentation with new components and new combinations leads to less useful inventions on average, bu…
Science as a map in technological search
A large body of work argues that scientific research increases the rate of technological advance, and with it economic growth. The precise mechanism through which science accelerates the rate of invention, however, remains an open question. Conceptualizing invention as a combinatorial search process, this paper argues that science alters inventors' search processes, by leading them more directly to useful combinations, eliminating fruitless paths…
Complexity, networks and knowledge flow
Small Worlds and Regional Innovation
Small-world networks have attracted much theoretical attention and are widely thought to enhance creativity. Yet empirical studies of their evolution and evidence of their benefits remain scarce. We develop and exploit a novel database on patent coauthorship to investigate the effects of collaboration networks on innovation. Our analysis reveals the existence of regional small-world structures and the emergence and disappearance of giant componen…
Brokerage, Boundary Spanning, and Leadership in Open Innovation Communities
What types of human and social capital identify the emergence of leaders of open innovation communities? Consistent with the norms of an engineering culture, we find that future leaders must first make strong technical contributions. Beyond technical contributions, they must then integrate their communities in order to mobilize volunteers and avoid the ever-present danger of forking and balkanization. This is enabled by two correlated but distinc…
Why the Valley Went First: Aggregation and Emergence in Regional Inventor Networks
The FinFET Breakthrough and Networks of Innovation in the Semiconductor Industry, 1980-2005: Applying Digital Tools to the History of Technology
The "FinFET" design for transistors, developed at the University of California, Berkeley, in the 1990s, represented a major leap forward in the semiconductor industry. Understanding its origins and importance requires deep knowledge of local factors, such as the relationships among the lab's principal investigators, students, staff, and the institution. It also requires understanding this lab within the broader network of relationships that compr…
Philanthropic supported innovation: Trends, areas, and impact
Philanthropy provides substantial support for science and research—does it do the same for technology and invention? We match patenting outcomes in the United States with philanthropic organizations as listed in the Candid database and find that at least 0.2% of U.S. patenting since 1976 received philanthropic support. After matching philanthropic patents to non-philanthropic patents based on technology, time, and the number of inventors, we find…
Heterogeneous Innovation over the Business Cycle
Schumpeter (1939) claims that recessions are periods of “creative destruction,” concentrating innovation that is useful for the long-term growth of the economy. However previous research finds that standard measures of firms’ innovation, such as R&D expenditures or raw patent counts, concentrate in booms. We argue that these measures do not capture shifts in firms’ innovative search strategies. We contemplate firms’ choice between exploration ver…
The Unintended Impact of R&D Tax Credits on Innovative Search
Research and development tax credits often aim to increase investment in experimentation, hoping that firms invent fundamentally new technologies that in turn generate positive spillovers. Since most policies require that companies make profits in order to claim credits, they might also shift investments towards less risky refinement and exploitation. Following the availability of credits, we demonstrate that firms do not experiment but deepen in…
Startups, Unicorns, and the Local Influx of Inventors
We provide evidence that an influx of technical human capital improves regional entrepreneurship, both by increasing firm entry and reducing entrepreneurial failure. The results also indicate negative externalities upon lowtech and competing industries: an influx of inventors in a county shifts the locus of venture capital investment away from low-tech startups to high-tech startups and moreover towards new ventures in the same sector as those in…
Computer Science (7 works) · Economics (7 works) · Business (6 works) · Innovation and Knowledge Management (6 works) · Sociology (6 works) · Industrial organization (5 works) · Innovation Diffusion and Forecasting (5 works) · Social science (5 works) · Engineering (4 works) · Artificial Intelligence (3 works)