Jordan Bisset Receives Heinz König Award 2024
Awards
27.09.2024
Outstanding Research in Innovation Economics Honoured at ZEW Mannheim
For 24 years now, ZEW Mannheim has been presenting the Heinz König Award for outstanding scientific work by young researchers. This year, Jordan Bisset from Bocconi University in Milan received the research award for his work “Intellectual Mobility Frictions”. His research makes a significant contribution to understanding the mobility of inventors and its impact on innovation policy.
“Jordan Bisset’s work is of great academic and policy relevance, as it is the first to quantify the costs of adapting to new technological fields. The results show that in times of skilled labour shortages and shrinking cohorts, more resources should be allocated to helping inventors transition into new technologies,” comments Professor Hanna Hottenrott, head of ZEW’s “Economics of Innovation and Industrial Dynamics” Unit, on the selection of the awardee.
High costs and impact on innovation
The awardee investigates mobility frictions – obstacles or costs that limit the mobility of inventors when switching research fields or specialisations. These frictions can take different forms, such as retraining costs, career concerns, and personal preferences or aversions to certain technologies or industries.
Bisset was the first to estimate the costs of mobility frictions. His findings reveal that these frictions are widespread and vary in intensity across firms and industries. Moreover, Bisset estimates that these frictions increased the total cost of invention worldwide by more than 330 billion dollars between 1990 and 2015. He highlights the importance of understanding and reducing these barriers to improve the economy’s ability to innovate and reduce costs. The data for his research came from the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s PatentsView database and the European Patent Office’s PATSTAT database.
About the Heinz König Young Scholar Award
The Heinz König Award is endowed with 5,000 euros and includes an invitation for a research stay at ZEW Mannheim. The prize is sponsored annually by a member of the ZEW Sponsors’ Association for Science and Practice. This year, FUCHS SE sponsored the prize for the third time. Dr. Ralph Rheinboldt, member of the board of FUCHS SE and chairman of the ZEW Sponsors’ Association, congratulates the winner: “It was very difficult for us to select the winner due to the high quality of the entries submitted, but in the end Jordan Bisset came out on top. His outstanding research is also of immense importance for companies such as FUCHS SE. On behalf of the ZEW Sponsors' Association and FUCHS SE, I would like to congratulate Mr Bisset on his success!”
The Heinz König Young Scholar Award is named after the late founding director of ZEW, Professor Heinz König, who died in 2002. The award recognises excellent empirical papers by up-and-coming researchers. This is done in the spirit of Heinz König, for whom it was a great concern to specifically promote young academics. ZEW continues this tradition to this day.
The ZEW Sponsors’ Association
The ZEW Sponsors’ Association provides funding for practice-relevant research projects, supports the organisation of ZEW lecture series with top-level speakers from the areas of politics, business and academia, and sponsors prizes for excellent scientific work and policy advice. The association counts 140 large and medium-sized companies as well as private individuals among its members, who, through their commitment, support ZEW as a strong economic research institute in Baden-Württemberg. For further information, please visit the ZEW Sponsors’ Association website (in German only).
