Breakthrough inventions in solar PV and wind technologies: The role of scientific discoveries

Breakthrough patents are highly influential patents with regard to further technology development. However, there is so far insufficient evidence about the driving forces for the creation of a breakthrough patent. We state that the probability of creating breakthrough patents is driven by the firms' closeness to science. In order to test this hypothesis, in a first step, we identify breakthrough patents based on forward citations. Subsequently, we estimate firm heterogeneity with regard to the probability to create breakthrough inventions based on a firm's closeness to science as well as on other potentially driving factors such as the tendency for international cooperation and the average number of people involved. Thereby we distinguish the solar PV industry (analytic knowledge-base) from the wind industry (synthetic knowledge-base). We find that closeness to science is more relevant in the wind industry to create breakthrough patents where technology development mostly relies on engineering knowledge. Furthermore, our results indicate that technological specialization is more advantageous for breakthrough creation in photovoltaics, while breakthrough patents in wind industry correlate with a broader knowledge-base.