From Minnesota to Paris – Prof. Carlos Serrano on Patents and Trailblazing

Carlos, you have lived and worked in quite a lot of different places. How has your journey been so far?  

I spent a long time in North America, I lived in Minneapolis/USA for five years, where I completed my PhD studies. Upon graduation I moved to Toronto where I grew as an academic, bought my first house, and had a really good time professionally and personally; in fact, my best friend lives in Toronto. My next stop was Barcelona for eight years, a familiar place for me because I grew up nearby. But to tell you the truth: I get tired of places. That, as well as how beautiful the city and exciting the school is, explains why I moved to Paris. I am very happy in Paris; my plan is to spend the rest of my life here.

Which stages had the greatest impact on you?

Minneapolis was fundamental for me. It got me interested in the economics of innovation and the role patents play for companies, particularly early-stage companies. Early in my PhD studies, I learned that there was no systematic academic work on markets for technology with data to trace the sale and buying of patents. Back then I talked to a professor of law, actually not an economist. He told me that he had worked on those transactions. The encounter with this professor and others led me to the patent office and there I found a new source of data that people had recorded for many years. I wrote my thesis on that and spent 20 years working on sale and purchase of patents.

At the University of Toronto, later in my tenure track, I moved my research trajectory into the financing of early-stage companies; particularly, to study the potential use of patents as collateral in debt financing. I demonstrated that the tradability of patent assets is a major lever in early-stage technology companies accessing debt capital. In Barcelona, I shifted my research focus on innovation from economics to strategy. In both of these changes in research trajectories, I built on my previous work on patent markets.

The biggest shift in my research has happened at HEC Paris, where I founded and run, together with a colleague, the ION Management Science Lab. This is a research lab fully funded by the ION Foundation and the Italian entrepreneur Andrea Pignataro, that focuses on the study of the economics of mentorship. My collaborators and I believe that mentorship can be a powerful facilitator here, whether that’s AI-powered mentorship, human mentorship, or some combination of both.

Did you ever have a plan B?

Career-wise, I didn’t. When I did my master in London at 22, I did have an alternative. If I had not pursued a PhD program in the US, I would have actually gone into the private sector in investment banking. But after that crucial decision, I always knew what I wanted. It was clear for me. I have been so lucky because I love what I do. Actually, I am obsessed with what I do for good or bad. As I get older, the obsession changes, but it is still very strong.

What publication are you particularly proud of?

I would say, the paper that documents systematic trading of patents in the modern days. This paper unearths a source of data for innovation that had been overlooked for years and also allows to document, in a systematic way, the functioning of modern markets of patents.

Can you describe why you are kind of a trailblazer?

I think I am like that by choice. I need to find areas where few people have worked, and then I can step in and combine theoretical work with data. That is what I’m good at. Whenever I changed my trajectory, it was because I talked to practitioners, not to academics. Any other way would not work for me. My advantage is being a bit entrepreneurial and trying to touch areas that are in between.

What are your connections to the TUM Campus Heilbronn?

I didn’t know anything about Heilbronn until a bit more than a year ago. An administrator at my university told me: “Carlos, I need a favor from you. You need to go to Heilbronn, HEC has this collaborative agreement with the TUM Campus.”

I am shocked that a small city of 120 000 people has such massive aspirations. It’s not Berlin or another big city, but you can feel energy here. How else can you explain for example a building for the Campus Founders with six levels? Maybe there is a lot of money, but money alone doesn’t solve problems, it doesn’t create anything. You need people. So, it’s the people what attracts me about Heilbronn.

What is your impression about the Global Technology Forum? 

It is interesting because as an academic, I rarely meet people outside my area of expertise. But here you meet computer scientists, sociologists, psychologists, economists – not just from different schools or from different parts of the world, but from completely different fields. And that is rare. Very rare.

Thanks for this interview, Carlos!

The next Global Technology Forum will take place on June 1^st and 2^nd 2026