How much should society fuel the greed of innovators?: On the relations between appropriability, opportunities and rates of innovation

The paper attempts a critical assessment of both the theory and the empirical evidence on the role of appropriability and in particular of Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) as incentives for technological innovation. We start with a critical discussion of the standard justification of the attribution of IPR in terms of “market failures” in knowledge generation. Such an approach, we argue, misses important features of technological knowledge and also neglects the importance of non-market institutions in the innovation process. Next, we examine the recent changes in the IPR regimes and their influence upon both rates of patenting and underlying rates of innovation. The evidence broadly suggests that, first, IPRs are not the most important device apt to “profit from innovation”; and second, they have at best no impact, or possibly even a negative impact on the underlying rates of innovation. Rather, we argue, technology- and industry-specific patterns of innovation are primarily driven by the opportunities associated with each technological paradigm. Conversely, firm-specific abilities to seize them and “profit from innovation” depend partly on adequacy of the strategic combinations identified by the taxonomy of [Teece, D., 1986. Profiting from technological innovation: implications for integration, collaboration, licensing and public policy. Research Policy 15, 285-305.] and partly on idiosyncratic capabilities embodied in the various firms.     

Introduction to the research policy 20th anniversary special issue of the publication of “Profiting from Innovation” by David J. Teece

This introductory essay reviews the key contributions of David Teece's landmark paper “Profiting from Innovation” published in research policy in 1986. It summarises the contributions of each of the papers in the special issue. It then offers some perspectives on the key themes emerging from these papers, and on the broader challenges facing researchers, strategists and policymakers in the field of technology innovation today.     

The elusive concept of innovation for Schumpeter,Marschak and the early econometricians

The modern concept of innovation is a crucial part of the analysis of capitalism as an adaptive system, and it is due to Schumpeter. Consequently, Schumpeter's role as a “prophet of innovation” has been rightly emphasized. This paper contributes to that history presenting some of the difficulties Schumpeter suffered as a formal representation of innovation was proposed by his fellow econometricians, as proved by the case of one of such dialogs, that with Jacob Marschak, at the time the director of the Cowles Commission and vice-president and then president of the Econometric Society. It is shown how Schumpeter elaborated his concepts of endogenous innovation and of industrial mutation as contrasted to the mechanical view of his fellow econometricians. Finally, the paper emphasizes the changes of the concept of randomness through the debate.     

Reflections of David Teece's “Profiting from technological innovation…”

This paper builds on Teece's, 1986 paper to consider how appropriability conditions affect the ability of an industry, and the economy as a whole, to progress. In particular, it offers a careful discussion of the broader costs and benefits of patenting. Can too much appropriability actually work against the broader interests of society in fostering economic growth and technical advance in the market?     

熊彼特及其新熊彼特主义学派关于创新-经济周期研究的述评

创新理论是解释经济周期的一个重要视角。本文以熊彼特及其主流新熊彼特主义学者的创新理论为依据,考察了他们以创新解释经济周期的逻辑发展过程,并扼要评论了他们的理论贡献与不足之处。     

Protecting their digital assets: The use of formal & informal appropriability strategies by App developers

Innovators and entrepreneurs developing products and competing “on top” of digital platforms face different conditions than do those in more traditional industries. In this paper, we explore how this affects appropriability strategies in novel data on mobile app developers’ appropriability strategies. We find that the many smallest developers in the “long tail”— the vast majority of all developers – do in fact take actions to capture value and to protect their intellectual property, but do so only through informal mechanisms. By contrast, larger developers exploit a combination of both informal mechanisms and formal intellectual property rights, using copyright, patents, and trademarks. Several strategies particular to digital platforms are also documented. We link this pattern of different strategies pursued by different competitor types to the structural features of digital competition.     

基于熊彼特创新视角的再工业化作用机制研究

2008年金融危机以来,美国实施再工业化战略以重振实体经济,德国出台"工业4.0"计划进一步加强工业竞争力,我国工业发展方式也亟需从投资与要素驱动向创新驱动转型。通过对美国再工业化战略、德国"工业4.0"计划进行系统分析与解构,发现其理论基础在于熊彼特创新。通过对熊彼特创新理论的重新阐释,研究熊彼特创新对再工业化的作用机理,认为其关键在于产品、技术、组织、市场、原料五维创新改变技术-经济范式,对工业进行"创造性毁灭",实现工业的转型升级,进而构建一个包涵五维创新、动态传导机制、"三位一体"支撑体系的再工业化理论框架。鉴于此,中国应从技术研发、开发清洁能源、培育企业家精神、完善金融市场、建立包容性制度等方面再造工业,向创新驱动发展模式转型。     

In search of complementary assets: The determinants of alliance formation of high-tech start-ups

Why do new technology-based firms (NTBFs) cooperate? Starting from Teece's [Teece, D.J., 1986. Profiting from technological innovation: implications for integration, collaboration, licensing, and public policy. Research Policy 15, 285-305] conceptual framework and taking advantage of subsequent literature on alliance formation in the resource and competence-based tradition and in the social structure perspective, we derive an empirical model that aims at highlighting the inducements and obstacles that these firms face in alliance formation according to firm-specific characteristics and the nature of the alliance. In particular, a distinction is made between exploitative commercial alliances and explorative technological alliances. The econometric estimates, based on a large sample of Italian young high-tech firms that are observed from 1994 to 2003, provide strong evidence supporting two key intuitions of Teece's work. First, the “combination of specialized complementary assets” appears to be a key driver of the formation of exploitative commercial alliances by NTBFs. More specifically, patent holding affects positively the likelihood to establish commercial alliances, but this propensity is found to rapidly decrease with firm size, suggesting that as long as NTBFs become larger and possess specialized commercial assets their urge for commercial alliances diminishes. Second, following the parallelism set forth by Teece between search for alliance partners and access to external financing, the analysis indicates that potentially beneficial alliances may not take place because of the high transaction costs faced by smaller NTBFs. In this respect, our results clearly support the view that sponsor institutions as public research organizations, venture and corporate venture capitalists may sensibly reduce these costs and that their role crucially depends on both the identity of the sponsor and the type of alliance.     

The paradox of openness: Appropriability,external search and collaboration

To innovate, firms often need to draw from, and collaborate with, a large number of actors from outside their organization. At the same time, firms need also to be focused on capturing the returns from their innovative ideas. This gives rise to a paradox of openness—the creation of innovations often requires openness, but the commercialization of innovations requires protection. Based on econometric analysis of data from a UK innovation survey, we find a concave relationship between firms’ breadth of external search and formal collaboration for innovation, and the strength of the firms’ appropriability strategies. We show that this concave relationship is stronger for breadth of formal collaboration than for external search. There is also partial evidence suggesting that the relationship is less pronounced for both external search and formal collaboration if firms do not draw ideas from or collaborate with competitors. We explore the implications of these findings for the literature on open innovation and innovation strategy.     

Currents and sub-currents in innovation flows: Explaining innovativeness using new-product announcements

The creation of new knowledge is a haphazard process: not every sector in an economy is equally involved. The effect of industry structure on innovativeness has been a focus of attention for a long time by both academics and policymakers. In a much quoted article, using unique data - new-product announcements - Acs and Audretsch [Acs, Z.J., Audretsch, D.B., 1988. Innovation in large and small firms: an empirical analysis. American Economic Review 78(4), 678-690] identified several characteristics of industry structure and their effects on innovativeness. By analyzing a new and more consciously compiled database, we re-examine their original claims. Our results largely support their findings: industry concentration and degree of unionization for instance hamper innovation; skilled labor promotes it. Our findings diverge in one significant respect from theirs: we suggest that the large firms do not contribute more to an industry’s innovativeness than small firms. At the industry level, we find strong support for the Schumpeter Mark I perspective of creative destruction by small firms rather than creative accumulation by large firms. In addition, we show that less dedicated innovators prove more susceptible to firm-external industry factors than more committed innovators. An unfavorable competitive environment decreases the likelihood that less successful innovators will announce new products.     

When do incumbents learn from entrepreneurial ventures?: Corporate venture capital and investing firm innovation rates

In this paper, we focus on the potential innovative benefits to corporate venture capital (CVC), i.e. equity investments in entrepreneurial ventures by incumbent firms. We propose that corporate venture capital programs may be instrumental in harvesting innovations from entrepreneurial ventures and thus an important part of a firm's overall innovation strategy. We hypothesize that these programs are especially effective in weak intellectual property (IP) regimes and when the firm has sufficient absorptive capacity. We analyze a large panel of public firms over a 20-year period and find that increases in corporate venture capital investments are associated with subsequent increases in firm patenting.     

The effect of external and internal factors on firms’ product innovation

In this article we analyse the effect of factors external and internal to the firm, on product innovation novelty, and how this effect varies by industry. We estimate three econometric models to determine the individual effects of these factors, their joint explanatory power and the effects of interactions among them. The analysis is based on a sample of 6094 manufacturing firms, taken from the Spanish Survey of Technological Innovation 2000. The results indicate that the firm's technological competences, derived from in-house R&D, are the main determinant of product innovation. They also suggest that in the presence of high levels of such competences, the technological opportunities deriving from non-industry agents become less important as determinants of innovation. We show that the determinants of innovation vary depending on the industrial sector and the degree of novelty of the product developed.     

The influence of regulations on innovation: A quantitative assessment for OECD countries

Regulatory framework conditions have been identified as important factors influencing the innovation activities of companies, industries and whole economies. However, in the empirical literature, the impacts of regulation have been assessed as rather ambivalent for innovation. Different types of regulations generate various impacts and even a single type of regulation can influence innovation in various ways depending on how the regulation is implemented. The endogenous growth approach developed by Carlin and Soskice (2006) and empirically applied by Crafts (2006), which determines endogenously the rate of technological progress and therefore innovation, allows a conceptual analysis of the influence of different types of regulation on innovation. In general, the negative effect of compliance costs should be compared with the more dynamic effect of regulations generating additional incentives for innovative activities. Based on this approach, we derive hypotheses on the impact of different specific regulations on innovation.We differentiate between economic, social and institutional regulations following the OECD taxonomy on regulations. Existing economic analyses are surveyed, which are characterised by rather heterogeneous approaches, data bases and results. The paper aims to apply a comprehensive and comparative approach to investigate quantitatively the innovation impacts in 21 OECD countries using panel data for the period between 1998 and 2004. In summary, the empirical results confirm the hypotheses derived from the conceptual theoretical framework determining technical progress and innovation endogenously and allowing a distinction between short-term and long-term effects. Consequently, the theoretical approach is an appropriate starting point for the empirical analysis of the influence of different regulations on innovation.     

进口竞争与企业创新——基于中国制造业企业专利数据的证据

基于中国进口扩张的现实背景,以1998-2013年中国制造业企业为研究样本,采用CEPII-BACI数据库、中国工业企业专利数据库和中国工业企业数据库的多重匹配数据,系统检验进口竞争对中国制造业企业研发创新的影响效应和作用机制.结果 表明:进口竞争显著降低企业产品创新程度,突破式创新和渐进式创新同时被削弱,且对高竞争行业、高政企关联企业和低技术行业创新的负面作用更为显著;熊彼特效应是中国制造业企业应对进口竞争的主导模式.提出适当放缓国家亟需且有待突破技术瓶颈领域的进口促进步伐,提高政府研发补贴力度和完善优惠政策,实现企业产品创新和服务转型双轮驱动,以及进口政策制定应根据产业技术水平配置差异化的进口竞争程度进行最优决策,以达到推动企业研发创新目的 等相关政策建议.     

From transaction to transformation costs: The case of Polaroid's SX-70 camera

Innovation in a product's design can have significant implications for the organization of competencies across a production network. Currently, discussions on product designs and the distribution of competencies across production networks are based on transaction costs considerations. However, such a view does not consider the transformation costs that arise when competencies across a production network are reorganized because of design changes. We explore the nature of these costs by examining the dynamics associated with Polaroid Corporation's greatest innovation, the SX-70 camera. Our longitudinal study suggests that it is not costless to redraw the boundaries of a firm. In the SX-70 camera case, Polaroid's relationships with its important stakeholders were adversely affected resulting in a deterioration of its competitive position. From this study, we suggest that it is critical to consider the transformation costs involved with radical innovations in order to gain a more complete picture of change in systemic industries.     

R&D spillovers, patents and the incentives to innovate in Japan and the United States

National surveys of R&D labs across the manufacturing sectors in the US and Japan show that intraindustry R&D knowledge flows and spillovers are greater in Japan than in the US and the appropriability of rents due to innovation less. Patents in particular are observed to play a more central role in diffusing information across rivals in Japan, and appear to be a key reason for greater intraindustry R&D spillovers there, suggesting that patent policy can importantly affect information flows. Uses of patents differ between the two nations, with strategic uses of patents, particularly for negotiations, being more common in Japan.     

The effects of global knowledge reservoirs on the productivity of multinational enterprises: The role of international depth and breadth

This study rests upon the premise that differences in the productivity performance of multinational enterprises (MNEs) stem from variations in their ability to access and combine globally distributed knowledge reservoirs within one organization. Its contribution lies in demonstrating that this important source of variation is determined by (a) the idiosyncratic manner in which the MNE's network of subsidiaries is structured, (b) the international breadth and depth of this network and (c) its location choices in the global landscape. We find that when multinationals spread their operations across many geographical markets, they benefit from knowledge externalities more than when they concentrate their activities in few countries. We further show that the ability to exploit spatially distant knowledge depends not only on idiosyncrasies specific to the MNE, but also on exogenous forces associated with international variations in appropriability regimes and industry-specific technological opportunities. As our study considers how the subsidiaries of the MNE collectively influence the productivity of the entire group, it captures complementarities and synergies within the group, and deepens understanding of how MNE-specific and location bound factors jointly shape performance outcomes.     

从全球创新指数看制约我国创新能力的关键因素

基于近3年来我国在全球创新指数(GII)上的排名分析,我国一方面创新能力整体上已经达到全球中上水平的层次,但另一方面又存在着十分突出的创新能力缺陷。具体来说,我国的创新制度环境明显不佳、创意产出明显不高、人力资本存在明显缺陷。针对制约我国创新能力的关键因素,系统地提出消除创新障碍、变创新阻碍因素为创新驱动因素的政策建议。     

From Innovation Systems to Knowledge Systems

This paper seeks to provide an understanding of knowledge creation and dissemination through an exploration and analysis of knowledge systems. It begins with a brief review of the systems of innovation approach. This is followed by a discussion of knowledge systems in which the nature of knowledge is considered and a definition of knowledge systems is outlined. A conceptual analysis of knowledge systems is provided in which they are compared and contrasted with systems of innovation. The conceptual framework presented is then examined more fully within the context of the computer services sector. Finally, conclusions are drawn and directions for further research are outlined.     

From hackers to start-ups: Innovation commons and local entrepreneurial activity

In hacker communities, tech-savvy pioneers collect and share information on nascent technologies. The pool of information shared among users reduces uncertainty about digital technology, but, first and foremost, it reveals entrepreneurial opportunities to users in the community, which is a central tenet of innovation commons theory. In this paper, we are first to explore the role of local hackerspaces for digital entrepreneurship in German counties using cross-sectional time series data. We find that longer-lasting hackerspaces are strongly correlated with the level of digital entrepreneurship in regions, particularly in agglomerations and urban contexts.