  Scientific and technological progress is largely driven by firms in many
domains, including artificial intelligence and vaccine development. However, we
do not know yet whether the success of firms' research activities exhibits
dynamic regularities and some degree of predictability. By inspecting the
research lifecycles of 7,440 firms, we find that the economic value of a firm's
early patents is an accurate predictor of various dimensions of a firm's future
research success. At the same time, a smaller set of future top-performers do
not generate early patents of high economic value, but they are detectable via
the technological value of their early patents. Importantly, the observed
predictability cannot be explained by a cumulative advantage mechanism, and the
observed heterogeneity of the firms' temporal success patterns markedly differs
from patterns previously observed for individuals' research careers. Our
results uncover the dynamical regularities of the research success of firms,
and they could inform managerial strategies as well as policies to promote
entrepreneurship and accelerate human progress.
