Technology Life Cycles: Investment, Growth, and Firm Value

We build a new century-long dataset of technology life cycles from USPTO patent titles, tracing 289 prominent technologies from initiation through emergence, prominence, and maturity over 1920-2023, and linking their patent histories to 9,047 global public firms. The earliest patents in prominent technologies are disproportionately influential and are primarily assigned to firms, especially large innovators. Decades before prominence, firms that patent early invest more, grow faster, and command higher valuation ratios. As technologies approach prominence, valuation premia compress even as profit margins and return on invested capital improve. After prominence, innovation becomes less foundational, pioneers' patent-share advantages erode only slowly on average, and the investment, growth, and valuation advantages of early participation fade or reverse. The erosion of early patent-share leadership is fastest when early competition among large innovators is intense.