Inventors’ mobility in Mexico in the context of globalization

Talent, technology, and the presence of supportive environments are key factors in producing knowledge and innovation. In this era of globalization, the knowledge economy is supported by knowledge mobility. Migration, brain drain, brain circulation, diasporas are frameworks to analyze knowledge mobility. Previous studies have shown that globalization has been accompanied by an important rise in the mobility of highly skilled human capital. This paper explores inventors’ mobility through an analysis of patents. In Mexico, the number of granted patents to Mexican residents at the United States Patents and Trademark Office (USPTO) has been diminishing, in absolute and relative terms, and the number of Mexican inventors in USPTO patents granted to non-Mexican assignees has been greatly increasing. The aim of this paper is to describe the mobility of Mexican inventors from 1976 until 2016. This exploratory and descriptive study is organized in two phases: firstly, the integration of a database of Mexican inventors in granted patents whose assignees are non-Mexicans, and secondly the identification of prolific Mexican inventors (with more than five granted patents) as well as inventors with recently issued patents. Preliminary findings show that after 1994, when Mexico joined NAFTA, the flow of Mexican inventors to multinational companies has increased.