International cooperation for Swedish inventors – an exploratory study

In this paper we report from a research project exploring the reasons behind why Swedish domestically invented patents end up being owned a foreign company. Based on survey data, we find that the majority of inventors behind these foreign-owned patents are professional inventors who have a relatively high amount of patent experience. They are also highly educated with about one third of the respondents having doctoral training. They are primarily motivated to invent because it is meriting and good for their career and as it gives them higher influence in the milieu where they are working. Only about 11% of the inventors had any influence on the decision to collaborate with a foreign firm. In most of the cases the inventors were either employed by a private firm who controlled the patent, or the invention behind the patent was ordered by the foreign firm already from the beginning. In the case where inventors had any influence on the decision, the most common reasons for seeking international collaboration was that the foreign firm provided better opportunities to commercialize the patent compared to Swedish firms and that the foreign firm could offer more money for financing development costs compared to Swedish firms.