SS5: Innovation, immigration and diversity in firms and cities

SPECIAL SESSIONS

Name and affiliations of the session organisers

Max Nathan (University College London)
Tom Kemeny (University of Toronto)
Ceren Ozgen (University of Birmingham)
Guido Pialli (University College London)
Anna Rosso (University of Insubria)
Anna Valero (London School of Economics)

Description

This special session will explore the roles that migrants and other minority communities can play in innovation, and the wider roles of migrant and other diversities on firms’ and cities’ innovative performance.

Migrants and other minority groups are over-represented as inventors, star scientists and entrepreneurs, both through selection and sometimes deliberate policy (Ozgen et al, 2012; Azoulay et al 2020; Bernstein et al, 2022). Globalisation has created further channels to innovation, both knowledge generation and its diffusion – through diasporic networks, the operation of multinational firms, and cross-national networks of academics and other researchers (Useche et al, 2020; Kerr and Mandorff, 2023). At the same time, immigration and diversity are closely related to innovation, especially at micro and urban scales (see reviews by Ozgen 2021, Kemeny 2017; Nathan 2015a), and more broadly to urban economic complexity (Bahar et al 2020). A core idea driving these linkages is that in group/team settings, individuals from different backgrounds produce innovation as heterogeneity allows agents to collectively map out more and better solutions to difficult problems (Hong and Page, 2001). A number of studies find empirical support for this diversity-innovation effect, especially in knowledge-intensive firms and sectors (see for example Cooke and Kemeny, 2017; Sulik et al, 2022).

This growing field has several distinct parts, which this session or sessions would build on. A first wave of studies explored diversity-innovation linkages at urban level (e.g. Ozgen et al, 2012; Nathan, 2015b; Bratti and Conti, 2018); a second wave uses richer firm and individual level data to explore team-level dynamics and within/across organisation linkages (e.g. Cooke and Kemeney, 2017). In parallel, scholars have explored the impacts of co-ethnic communities, diasporas and other transnational communities on ideas generation and spread, both local and international (Kerr 2008; Docquier et al 2012; Akcigit et al 2017; Kerr and Kerr 2018; Orefice et al 2022; Kerr and Mandorff 2023); and management researchers have developed a rich understanding of ‘top team’ diversities, especially within large firms (Mannix and Neale 2005; Adams and Ferreira 2009; Lee 2014; Nathan 2016).

We would welcome submissions covering (but not limited to) the following topics:

Innovation and diverse teams and workforces
Migrant and other minority group inventors
Innovation, technological change and immigration
Migrant and other minority group entrepreneurship, and its role in firm / product / service creation
Diversity, ideas generation, scrutiny and groupthink
Diversity-innovation channels in different industry settings, and at different levels of the firm
High-skilled immigrants and job complexity
The effects of intersecting diversities: for example birth country, ethnicity, gender, language, age
Innovation, diversity and cultural or other proximity/distance
Diasporic and transnational networks
Diversities and multinational firms
Innovation, immigration and integration, for example first / second / third generation impacts
Relevant policy evaluations, for example on high-skill migration; researcher mobility; etc.
Studies using frontier methods and data sources, especially at-scale.

Click here to go back to the Call for Papers and submission link

References

Adams, R. B. and D. Ferreira (2009). Women in the boardroom and their impact on governance and performance. Journal of Financial Economics 94(2): 291-309.

Akcigit, U., Grigsby, J., & Nicholas, T. (2017). Immigration and the rise of American ingenuity. American Economic Review, 107(5), 327–331.

Bahar, D., H. Rapoport and R. Turati (2020). Birthplace diversity and economic complexity: Cross-country evidence. Research Policy: 103991.

Bernstein, S., Diamond, R., Jiranaphawiboon, A., McQuade, T., & Pousada, B. (2022). The contribution of high-skilled immigrants to innovation in the United States. National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. W30797.

Bratti, M., & Conti, C. (2014). (2018) The effect of immigration on innovation in Italy, Regional Studies, 52:7, 934-947

Cooke, A., & Kemeny, T. (2017). Cities, immigrant diversity, and complex problem solving. Research Policy, 46(6), 1175-1185.

Docquier, F. and H. Rapoport (2012). Globalization, Brain Drain, and Development. Journal of Economic Literature 50(3): 681-730.

Hong, L., & Page, S. E. (2001). Problem solving by heterogeneous agents. Journal of economic theory, 97(1), 123-163.

Kemeny, T. (2017). Immigrant diversity and economic performance in cities. International Regional Science Review, 40(2), 164-208.

Kerr, W. R., & Mandorff, M. (2023). Social networks, ethnicity, and entrepreneurship. Journal of Human Resources, 58(1), 183-220.

Kerr, S. P., & Kerr, W. R. (2018). Global collaborative patents. Economic Journal, 128(July), 235–272.

Kerr, W. R. (2008). Ethnic scientific communities and international technology diffusion. Review of Economics and Statistics, 90(3), 518–537.

Lee, N. (2014). Migrant and ethnic diversity, cities and innovation: Firm effects or city effects? Journal of Economic Geography 15(4): 769-796.

Mannix, E. and M. A. Neale (2005). What Differences Make a Difference?: The Promise and Reality of Diverse Teams in Organizations. Psychological Science in the Public Interest 6(2): 31-55.

Nathan, M. (2015a). After Florida: Towards an economics of diversity. European Urban and Regional Studies, 22(1), 3-19.

Nathan, M. (2015b). Same Difference? Minority ethnic inventors, diversity and innovation in the UK. Journal of Economic Geography 15(1): 129-168.

Nathan, M. (2016). Ethnic diversity and business performance: Which firms? Which cities? Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 48(12): 2462-2483.

Orefice, G., H. Rapoport and G. Santoni (2022). How Do Immigrants Promote Exports? Networks, Knowledge, Diversity. IZA Discussion Paper 15722. Bonn, IZA.

Ozgen, C. (2021). The economics of diversity: Innovation, productivity and the labour market. Journal of Economic Surveys, 35(4), 1168-1216.

Ozgen, C., Nijkamp, P., & Poot, J. (2012). Immigration and innovation in European regions. In Migration impact assessment (pp. 261-298). Edward Elgar Publishing.

Sulik, J., Bahrami, B., & Deroy, O. (2022). The diversity gap: when diversity matters for knowledge. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 17(3), 752-767.

Useche, D., Miguelez, E., & Lissoni, F. (2020). Highly skilled and well connected: Migrant inventors in cross-border M&As. Journal of International Business Studies, 51, 737-763.

SPECIAL SESSIONS