Overview
How does the first firm to build on a breakthrough shape the inventive paths and opportunities available to firms that follow?
I develop competitive shaping search to explain how a firm's early choices of knowledge elements and linkages can affect later search around the same generative invention. Horizontal shaping makes a derivative path less attractive to other firms. Vertical shaping positions the first searcher to benefit from future recombination possibilities. Using patent data, I relate knowledge relationships established before the breakthrough to the timing of later follow-on invention.
The study
For 4,030 generative inventions, I identify the first external citing firm and firms that cite the invention later. Other firms follow sooner when the first searcher had previously drawn on knowledge from a larger share of those firms. They follow later when more of those firms had drawn on the first searcher's knowledge and the first searcher had accumulated a larger patent stock.
