  Complex systems research and network science have recently been used to
provide novel insights into economic phenomena such as patenting behavior and
innovation in firms. Several studies have found that increased mobility of
inventors, manifested through firm switching or transitioning, is associated
with increased overall productivity. This paper proposes a novel structural
study of such transitioning inventors, and the role they play in patent
co-authorship networks, in a cohort of highly innovative and economically
influential companies such as the five Big Tech firms (Apple, Microsoft,
Google, Amazon and Meta) in the post-recession period (2010-2022). We formulate
and empirically investigate three research questions using Big Tech patent
data. Our results show that transitioning inventors tend to have higher degree
centrality than the average Big Tech inventor, and that their removal can lead
to greater network fragmentation than would be expected by chance. The rate of
transition over the 12-year period of study was found to be highest between
2015-2017, suggesting that the Big Tech innovation ecosystem underwent
non-trivial shifts during this time. Finally, transition was associated with
higher estimated impact of co-authored patents post-transition.
