Leisure Time Invention

This paper seeks to add to our understanding of how the creative process might affect patent value by investigating the possible effect of a further, as yet unexplored characteristic, “leisure time invention,” where the main insight leading to the invention emerges when the inventor is not engaged in paid work. Leisure time inventions, if mentioned in the literature at all, are disparaged as being of marginal importance and low economic value. But anecdotal evidence (for example, the invention of 3M’s highly successful Post-It Notes) suggests that this may not necessarily be the case. One might speculate that a problem-solving process where an inventor chooses to be engaged without being paid – and is thereby “freed” from the normal work time pressures – could lead to unconventional, less path-dependent search processes, increasing the probability of making more valuable inventions. Based on data from an inventor survey, we show that patents granted to leisure time inventions are more valuable than patents granted to work time inventions. Moreover, the size of the ‘leisure time effect’ on patent value increases with the value of the patent.