Browsing by Subject "prosopografi"

Innovation is an important theme in economics and economic history because modern societies with sustained economic growth are based on constant creation and employment of new technology. This thesis studies the role of individuals and organisations in creating innovations in Finland in the period 1880-1940. A debate in economic history of innovation concerns the notion that innovation was driven by individual inventors without support of formal training and an organisation around them until late 19th century. The alleged transition from independent to dependent innovation created by formally trained inventors within firms in the early 20th century implies that innovation activities would have intensified in the period and, using more of state-of-the-art knowledge, would have produced more innovations of a higher quality. The novelties of this thesis are its focus on independent inventorship in Finland and exceptional focus on inventor careers through biographical or prosopographic data. Finland is an interesting object of study due to a research gap. Finnish technological development has been studied before in literature. However, earlier literature has not addressed the question of independent and dependent innovation in Finland. Literature using historical Finnish patent data has addressed other themes such as patenting by foreigners before the First World War and technology markets. The major data source in this thesis is the Finnish patent database created in a research project at the University of Helsinki. It contains data on patents registered in Finland in 1842-1940 of which I use data on years 1880-1940. I measure this increased quality and complexity of inventing through a quantitative measure, the duration of patents. The variable is used often in quantitative historical literature to measure the quality of patents. As an additional indicator of patent quality, I check the distribution of technological International Patent Classifications (IPC) of patents. I study the distributions by looking at individual and organisation patentees from Finland, Sweden, Germany and the rest of the world’s countries to assess the role of technology and human capital transfer from abroad to Finland. I also use additional prosopographic or biographical data on 93 Finnish inventors with patents in the Finnish patent database between 1910 and 1940 except for two inventors with biography patents prior to 1910. I take the biographical data from two biography databases of Finnish Literature Society (Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura), the National Biography of Finland and Talouselämän vaikuttajat. I match the data in biographies with patent data in Finnish patent database. I use these biographies to assess in more detail the formal training, career paths, international connections, economic sectors of work and social background of inventors. The main contribution of this thesis is showing that most inventors worked in organisations when inventing in Finland in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Besides independent inventors actually being dependent, the official patent data seems to show that firms, particularly foreign firms from Sweden and Germany, were important drivers of innovation and economic growth in Finland since the early 1920s. Foreign firms were particularly important in high-tech sectors like chemistry. Independent innovation was rare in Finland already in the late 19th century and early 20th century as innovation was largely carried out by firms and, when studied through prosopographic data, allegedly independent inventors were actually working in or for firms in some way. The results of this thesis are similar to earlier literature on other Nordic countries. The results on biography patents reveal that the official patent data understate the professional and social background of inventors. Even though many inventors were presented in official patent records as engineers, most of the inventors in the biography sample, around 50-60 per cent, were managers, board members or owners of firms when inventing. Inventors had clear occupational continuity in their career. Most inventors had a lot of formal training as over 60 per cent of biography patent inventors had an academic education. Many inventors had education and work experience from abroad, mostly from Germany, Sweden, the USA and Russia. Most inventors had worked most of their career or the second longest term of their careers in someone else’s firm or their own firm. However, there is speculative evidence in this thesis that work history in the public sector or the academia can help inventors to provide high quality technology. The social mobility of inventors was low as most inventors had an upper middle-class or high social background: most inventors were either engineers, managers or non-technical experts and so were their fathers.