Communities and central nodes in the mobility network of US inventors

This study presents the basic features and community structure of the US inventor mobility network between 1999 and 2010, based on an analysis of patent documents. Since mobile inventors have proved to be among the most effective knowledge mediator entities, this mobility network can be seen as a knowledge diffusion network among innovative companies. During the investigation, we identified the basic features of the network, such as short effective diameter and scale-free degree distributions, and we also demonstrated the central nodes, community structure, and hidden core of the network. Our results indicate that there is a small number of nodes that can effectively absorb knowledge from the network and pool it. We also find that this core mostly consists of IT and semiconductor companies as well as the largest universities in the USA.