Working Paper Series in Economics and Institutions of Innovation,
Royal Institute of Technology, CESIS - Centre of Excellence for Science and Innovation Studies

Abstract: The paper examines whether the innovation potential of start-ups is influenced by existing innovative firms via the board of directors. This channel of spillover is largely unexplored. Our analysis of over 370,000 firm-year observations on more than 60,000 Swedish start-up firms which entered the market between 2002 and 2013 shows a positive effect of the boards’ innovation experience on the propensity to apply for patents, while no impact on trademark registration is found. The results are robust to controlling for unobserved heterogeneity as well as worker and managerial mobility, human capital, board diversity, venture capital, patent citations, firm size, region and industry.

Keywords: start-ups; board of directors; knowledge spillovers; innovation; instrumental variable estimation

JEL-codes: C36; D24; L21; M13; O33

51 pages, First version: November 29, 2019. Revised: August 16, 2020.

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