Jon Putnam founded Competition Dynamics after more than 30 years of experience with the economics of intellectual property, R&D, productivity growth, industrial organization, and international trade.
Beginning in the late 1970s at Yale’s Economic Growth Center, Dr. Putnam studied the economic relationships among economic growth, R&D investments, and international flows of information and technology under Nobel Prize winners Tjalling Koopmans, James Tobin and Robert Shiller.
Dr. Putnam’s interest culminated in his Ph.D. thesis, The Value of International Patent Rights (1996). He became a “full-blooded” member of the “Tree of Zvi,” intellectual descendants of the late Harvard economist Zvi Griliches, the most influential scholar in the study of R&D and productivity growth.
That year, Dr. Putnam joined the competition practice of Charles River Associates and became the first full-time employee devoted to intellectual property matters.
With the opening of CD in 2012, Dr. Putnam created the first economic consulting firm devoted exclusively to the intersection of antitrust, intellectual property, and international trade. CD’s founding coincides with the ever-increasing prominence of these issues in the minds of courts, legislators, policy-makers, and of course the clients that must navigate often-uncharted waters.
