Events

Cumulative innovation is a driving force of economic growth. Access costs, the time and effort scientists need to devote to understand existing knowledge, may potentially hinder new innovation. I examine the effect of a decrease in access costs resulting from the adoption of a data reporting standard Minimum Information About a Microarray Experiment (MIAME) on subsequent life sciences research. I take advantage of a natural experiment to implement a difference-in-differences estimate of MIAME on subsequent use of data in journal publications. The results show that microarray data submitted after journal adopts MIAME is at least 50 percent more likely to be reused. Overall, the evidence suggests that the decline of access costs due to data reporting standards is important for the accumulation of knowledge in the life sciences.

Founders’ interpretive schemes affect emerging organizations in fundamental ways, because they provide  the cognitive lens through which founders define the purposes and critical features of their organizations. By conducting an in-depth, qualitative study of the emergence process of 25 technology ventures, we extend prior work in several ways. First, we show how founders diverge in the scope of their interpretive schemes, as some make sense of their firms in a narrow way (focused on one organizational path), whereas others view their firms through either a broad lens (variety generating, experimentation with multiple paths) or vague lens (variety generating, exploration of multiple paths). Second, we find that differences in the scope of founders’ interpretive schemes have important ramifications for both the organizational emergence process (because the founders’ schemes become embodied in their organizations’ structures) and its outcomes (because new organizations first need to find “fertile ground” that allows them to become viable entities). In particular, our results show that ventures established on the basis of broad and vague interpretive schemes will possess greater ability to change and adapt over time – which is of importance because most firms in our sample had to engage in fundamental re-orientation within three years after founding – and that the former can make greater progress on their journey to viable organizations than the narrow or vague types. These results help to advance theory on organizational emergence, and provide key insights to recent discussions about the role of experimentation in entrepreneurship.

Nikolaus Thumm is chairman of the European Commision Expert Group on Patent Aggregation. This group was convened by the European Commission to investigate whether there is a need for a European Commission intervention to foster the development of IP markets, in particular through aggregation of patents, with a focus on patent pools and funds. The premise is that some patents would be more valuable, or would be more likely to be used, if they were aggregated, that is, if patents belonging to different owners were gathered together in such a way that single entities or groups could act as licensors of all the patents, or of as many of them as might attract the attention of potential licensees. The development of the market in patents and licences should be understood as the enhanced application of patents and licences to drive innovation as well as maximise returns to entities that are actively engaged in R&D, in particular small and medium sized entities, that may not have the marketing and legal potential to fully exploit and enforce their individual or limited number of patents.

The research project integrates the following three areas: 1. IP strategy including IP investment (patenting, trademark registration) and its enforcement, 2. marketing strategy including market expansion path and market selection, and 3. technology management. The case study covers companies from the US, China, Japan, and Germany.

We measure the size of knowledge spillovers of R&D activities done by venture capital financed start-ups and compare them quantitatively to spillovers of conventional corporate R&D. We suggest a novel measure to identify the appropriate spillover pool based on backward citations which reflect learning between firms. Using panel data of U.S. firms we show that venture capital financed R&D generates significant spillovers on the patent production of other firms. Counterfactual estimates suggest that the spillovers generated by VC-financed firms are more than 50% larger than those generated by established companies. We address potential endogeneity concerns with an instrumental variable strategy using changes in federal and state tax incentives as instrumental variable for R&D and past fund raising as instrument for venture capital investment.

Sellers often seek intermediaries that can help them develop their products and market them to buyers. Sellers prefer intermediaries that have great market access, so that they can reach buyers, and where they have a high relative standing, so that they receive greater resources from the intermediary. However, these criteria are conflicting. A seller often needs to choose either an intermediary with limited market access, where it has a high relative standing (“big fish, little pond”), or an intermediary with great market access, where it has a low relative standing (“little fish, big pond”). I study how sellers resolve this dilemma by examining how 419 video game developers choose among 178 video game publishers over a nine-year period. I find that sellers’ resolutions of the dilemma are contingent on their own characteristics and on characteristics of the intermediaries. In particular, I find that sellers’ preferences shift towards great market access when they have more experience or a higher proportion of derivative products, but that they shift towards high relative standing when the competition among the sellers in the intermediary’s portfolio escalates due to a larger portfolio size or increased seller overlap.

Post-grant validity challenges at patent offices rely on the private initiative of third parties to correct mistakes made by patent offices. We hypothesize that incentives to bring post-grant validity challenges are reduced when many firms benefit from revocation of a patent and when firms are caught up in patent thickets. Using data on opposition against patents at the European Patent Office we show that opposition decreases in fields in which many others profit from patent revocations. Moreover, in fields with a large number of mutually blocking patents the incidence of opposition is sharply reduced, particularly among large firms and firms that are caught up directly in patent thickets. These findings indicate that post-grant patent review may not constitute an effective correction device for erroneous patent grants in technologies affected by either patent thickets or highly dispersed patent ownership.

Recent research on the economics of patents is surveyed. The topics covered include theoretical and empirical evidence on patents as incentives for innovation, the effectiveness of patents for invention disclosure, patent valuation, and the design of patent systems. We also look at some current policy areas, including software and business method patents, university patenting, and the growth in patent litigation.