The antecedents of green technologies: The role of team-level recombinant capabilities

Understanding the antecedents of green technologies is crucial for firms' green innovation strategies. The paper focuses on inventor teams' ability to recombine previous knowledge to innovate in the green domain. Exploiting patent data over the period 1995-2009, our results show that green technologies are, on average, more likely to be generated by teams that creatively recombine previous knowledge. Moreover, this effect is found to be moderated by teams' previous experience in the generation of green technologies, and by the stringency of the environmental policy framework. Our results bring implications for the strategic management of inventor teams within firms willing to grasp the opportunities set forth by the emergence of new markets for green technologies.