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Abstract
How do collaboration networks shape the direction of inventive search? We study organizational bridges: co-inventor ties that connect individual inventors to peers employed outside firms specialized in different fields. Using U.S. patent records matched to employer histories for four million inventors, we show that such bridges influence the propensity with which a given inventor files a first patent in a connected field. Because existing ties are influenced by the inventor’s own employment and innovation history, we exploit inventor displacements during mass layoffs, using an instrument built from which fields absorb other displaced inventors in the same labor market. Organizational bridges raise entry into the fields where the collaborator’s employer specializes, and they do so before the focal inventor has any employment contact with that firm. The employer’s specialization predicts entry conditional on the collaborator’s own patent portfolio. The induced entries persist and generate additional patents and citations in the connected field. Policies that alter worker mobility may therefore affect inventive activity beyond the firms directly involved, but mobility alone does not direct invention toward fields in which few inventors already specialize.