Murod Aliyev

Source:  https://unsplash.com/photos/a-star-on-the-ground-with-gravel-around-it-kmz_wssINQw Summary: Employing star inventors is often viewed as a guaranteed path to technological success. However, our recent article, published open access in the Journal of Management Studies, reveals the hidden paradox of accumulating star inventors. While elite talent drives massive breakthroughs, packing your R&D lab with stars can actively bottleneck incremental innovation.

INTRODUCTION Star inventors, positioned at the top of the talent distribution, represent exceptionally valuable and scarce resources that enable firms to generate cutting-edge innovations (Heeley et al., 2026; Liu et al., 2018; Markman et al., 2008). From the human capital perspective, the expertise and social networks of star inventors are viewed as key contributors to firm innovation performance (Call et al., 2025; Grigoriou and Rothaermel, 2014; Kehoe and Tzabbar, 2015; Liu, 2014).

Introduction Intangible assets (IAs), such as technology and brands, are characterized by path dependency that makes their accumulation and imitation difficult (Dierickx and Cool, 1989), therefore helping firms to create sustained competitive advantages and rents in a market (Huang et al., 2015; Peteraf, 1993).