The influence of the early formation of human and social capital on inventiveness: perspectives from a Swedish case study

Abstract

Analysing life-history narratives of Swedish inventors, this paper explores how family background influences upon the formation of social and human capital and demonstrates how these capital resources affect the creative abilities of inventors. The main findings of the paper are that the socio-economic position one is born into has important implications for the development of human and social capital, and that the nature and extent of an inventor’s capital assets strongly influences the nature of his or her inventiveness. Inventors who come from higher socio-economic backgrounds have greater endowments of formal human capital than those from more modest backgrounds, and the social networks they use in their inventive work link them to other actors with human capital endowments similar to their own. Therefore, inventors with high human capital endowments will benefit from their social networks, as they constitute important means of gaining access to innovative knowledge and business advice. In contrast, inventors from lower socio-economic backgrounds with limited formal human capital resources are more likely to have actors in their social networks who themselves possess limited formal human capital. However, these inventors may become prosperous inventors if they are endowed with great social capital resources from their formative backgrounds because, for inventors, high endowments of social capital can compensate for a lack of formal human capital.