Patent analysis reveals higher technological impact among green technology startups, suggesting early-stage advantages decline as organizational routines solidify.
We study the technological impact of inventions developed by firms operating in the green domain at an early stage of their lifecycle, Green Technology-Based Startups (GTBSs). Building on a large dataset of US patenting firms from 1976 to 2019, we compare the inventive performance of GTBSs with that of other startups and incumbent firms. We find that GTBSs develop inventions with higher impact compared to the other groups. This premium is concentrated in green technologies, it is strongest among firms that develop both green and non-green technologies and it is limited in time. It declines as firms mature, consistent with the consolidation of organizational routines over the firm lifecycle. Inventor-team technological distance is found to be central: GTBSs exhibit inventor-team distance comparable to other startups but exceeding that of incumbents, indicating that the inventions with the highest impact is generated at intermediate levels of cognitive diversity. Our results suggest that firm type, lifecycle dynamics and knowledge recombination jointly shape technological impact of GTBSs. We conclude that policies supporting startups that integrate green and non-green capabilities are more likely to yield higher inventive returns.
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Lupi et al. (2026) studied this question.
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