Technological outsourcing and product diversification: do markets for technology affect firms’ strategies?

This paper analyses how the existence of competitive technology markets affects firms’ technology sourcing decisions, and their propensity to enter into new product markets. While the division of innovative labour has received increasing attention within the economic literature, this paper focuses on its managerial implications. By means of a specialised database, we assess how patterns of technology trade influence firms’ technology and diversification strategies in the chemical industry. We find that, the larger the market for technology, the stronger the advantages to substitute internal R&D with outsourcing, and to increase the degree of product diversification.     

French firms’ strategies for protecting their intellectual property

In attempting to protect their innovations, firms can choose from a range of mechanisms, which may be either non-statutory (trade secrets, design complexity, and lead-time advantage over competitors) or statutory (patent, design registration, trademark, copyright). Yet, little is known about how firms do actually make their choices from among these different appropriability mechanisms. The aim of this paper is to determine how French firms’ use of intellectual property protection mechanisms relates to the type of innovation, the characteristics of the market sector in which they operate, the firms’ characteristics, and their human resources strategies. Our empirical model draws on four French databases covering the period 2001-2004. Our results show that the choice of a means of protection matters and emerges out of a complex strategy. Our results also reveal that the different statutory and non-statutory means of protection are complementary within their own categories but hardly so between categories.     

From the ivory tower to the startup garage: Organizational context and commercialization processes

An impressive literature documents how individual-level factors correlate with entrepreneurship and commercialization behaviors. We have far less insight, however, into how different organizational contexts may, in fact, play a dominant role in shaping these individuals and their behaviors. In this paper, I leverage a unique case of commercialization in which a largely overlapping team attempted to commercialize a technology in two different organizational contexts – first, in a university and later in a startup firm. By detailing the contextual features in each organizational environment and by linking these features to the participants’ differing approaches and attitudes toward commercialization, I extend the current literature through a demonstration of how organizational context shapes not only the initial decision to become an entrepreneur, but also the specific ways in which individuals interpret and act upon an entrepreneurial mission. More generally, I contribute to the literature on the commercialization of university research by highlighting some of the challenges inherent in adapting a context optimized for exploration to the task of exploitation.     

Determinants of proactive and reactive technology licensing: A contingency perspective

Industrial firms increasingly attempt to license their technologies apart from applying them in their own products. Because of the imperfections in technology markets, an active approach towards technology licensing does not automatically result in licensing transactions. To balance prior research, which has focused on licensing transactions as the outcome of licensing intentions, we take a contingency view to analyze how characteristics of a firm's innovation ecosystem determine different strategic types of licensing. Specifically, we distinguish proactive licensing, which refers to identifying recipients for technology transactions, and reactive licensing, which relates to offering licenses to infringers of a firm's intellectual property. Survey data show that environmental antecedents concerning appropriability, i.e., patent protection and technological turbulence, and determinants regarding technology markets, i.e., transaction frequency and competitive intensity, have different effects on proactive and reactive licensing. On this basis, the article has major implications for research into technology licensing, markets for technology, and open innovation.     

Technological collaboration in product innovation: The role of market competition and sectoral technological intensity

Drawing on the strategic alliances and innovation literature, this study proposes that the impact of technological collaboration on product innovation is contingent on market competition and sectoral technology characteristics. Specifically, it argues that the generally observed positive effect of technological collaboration on product innovation may be diluted in highly competitive markets, and the interactive effect of technological collaboration and market competition on product innovation will be further moderated by sectoral technological intensity. Data on the product innovation and technological collaboration of 944 Chinese firms across five manufacturing sectors provide robust support for the contingent effects of technological collaboration on product innovation.     

中国技术要素市场体系构建的问题和对策

目前从市场体系视角开展中国技术要素市场发展的研究非常有限，因此，为促进实现建设“统一开放、竞争有序、制度完备、治理完善的高标准技术市场体系”这一目标，梳理总结分析“十三五”时期中国技术要素的市场发展和市场体系建设情况。结果发现，中国技术要素市场仍存在技术要素市场体系建设顶层设计有待完善、适应市场需求的高质量技术供给不足、现代技术交易市场建设有待健全、技术要素市场服务体系有待优化、技术要素与资本数据等要素融合不充分等问题；为此提出构建中国高标准技术要素市场体系的思路，并从健全技术要素市场政策体系、提高供给成果质量、建设互联互通技术交易市场、优化技术要素市场服务体系、推动技术与资本要素融合发展、强化技术要素市场监管等方面提出对策，为促进中国技术要素市场发展提供决策参考。     

Exploring the duality between product and organizational architectures: A test of the “mirroring” hypothesis

A variety of academic studies argue that a relationship exists between the structure of an organization and the design of the products that this organization produces. Specifically, products tend to “mirror” the architectures of the organizations in which they are developed. This dynamic occurs because the organization's governance structures, problem solving routines and communication patterns constrain the space in which it searches for new solutions. Such a relationship is important, given that product architecture has been shown to be an important predictor of product performance, product variety, process flexibility and even the path of industry evolution.We explore this relationship in the software industry. Our research takes advantage of a natural experiment, in that we observe products that fulfill the same function being developed by very different organizational forms. At one extreme are commercial software firms, in which the organizational participants are tightly-coupled, with respect to their goals, structure and behavior. At the other, are open source software communities, in which the participants are much more loosely-coupled by comparison. The mirroring hypothesis predicts that these different organizational forms will produce products with distinctly different architectures. Specifically, loosely-coupled organizations will develop more modular designs than tightly-coupled organizations. We test this hypothesis, using a sample of matched-pair products.We find strong evidence to support the mirroring hypothesis. In all of the pairs we examine, the product developed by the loosely-coupled organization is significantly more modular than the product from the tightly-coupled organization. We measure modularity by capturing the level of coupling between a product's components. The magnitude of the differences is substantial—up to a factor of six, in terms of the potential for a design change in one component to propagate to others. Our results have significant managerial implications, in highlighting the impact of organizational design decisions on the technical structure of the artifacts that these organizations subsequently develop.     

中药材市场电子商务平台技术方案探究

建设现代中药材市场,离不开信息化,实现中药材市场信息化,其主角是电子商务平台。结构合理、科学实用的技术方案,是开发电子商务平台的关键,需要认真论证与探讨。     

中外家族企业制度变迁的比较分析及对我国的借鉴意义

首先对家族企业的概念进行引介和界定；然后对世界范围内家族企业存在的现状进行回顾，并对其广泛存在的原因从新制度经济学的角度进行阐释；最后着重对美国、日本、意大利及中国家族企业的制度变迁进行了比较分析，在此基础上对我国家族企业的未来走向进行了探索性的思考。     

Participation in technology standards development: A decision model for the information and communications technology (ICT) industry

This study presents a framework to guide managers in the ICT industry in assessing the factors that inform the decision to participate in the development of technology standards. Using multi-criteria decision analysis and judgment data from panels of experts, a robust model is developed that comprehends the essential criteria and outcomes within the context of computer interconnect technologies. The resultant, generalizable model is validated against the case of the extant Universal Serial Bus (USB) interconnect standard and found to be congruent with the assessment of the experts.     

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.     

女性企业家创业的内部动因及其对管理风格的影响

当前，女性企业家正成为企业群体中的重要力量，但其创业原因却由寻求求经济条件改善等外部动因逐渐转化为寻求自我价值实现的内部动因。通过对当前女性企业家创业的内部动因特点的分析，指出创业的内部动因会对创立企业的目标确立产生影响，进而影响到女性企业家的管理风格。     

Interruption management and office norms: Technology adoption lessons from a product commercialization study

This paper explores factors that influence technology adoption in an office environment, with an emphasis on technology aimed at managing focused and collaborative work by reducing unwelcome interruptions for its users. Based on surveys, focus groups, and usability studies, our findings suggest that workplace social norms play a pivotal role in the adoption and use of interruption management technologies. Our findings display a marked lag of social norms behind the importance placed on uninterrupted time by individuals; even when individuals see the efficacy of the technology, they often misjudge their peers’ attitudes, underestimating their colleagues’ similar needs. In spite of high levels of perceived usefulness reported by our participants, need and ease of use alone were insufficient to predict uptake; when technology has implications for the office behavioral environment, it must be supported by social norms encouraging adoption. Our results further suggest that feedback, which actively engages a product's user, could be crucial to encouraging prolonged use and enhancing the user experience. Although the findings are drawn from a pre-commercialization study of an interruption management technology, they are broadly relevant to technology adoption cases, with special salience for those within the office context.     

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.     

我国技术市场发展程度的测度

摘要：本文首先对技术市场的概念及其测度进行述评,然后考虑指标体系的完整性和现实性、测度指标的科学性和可操作性,从技术市场主体发展程度、技术市场运行的完善程度、技术市场法律政策环境的保障程度和技术市场的效益等四个角度出发,构建了我国技术市场发展程度的测度指标体系;并采用专家打分法,对1991-2006年我国技术市场发展程度进行定量测算。结果显示：我国技术市场发展的总体趋势是上升的;但与我国市场经济总体发展程度相比,技术市场的发展水平还很低;从技术市场发展的四个方面来看,还存在很大的不平衡性。     

技术分级与技术市场组织设计初探

技术可以分为四种基本形态和六个等级 ,这可以作为技术商品定价的理论依据。此外 ,技术市场具有七种功能类型 ,它们的经济收入性质也不一致。为了提高我国科技市场的管理水平 ,本文提出改变我国现有的科层 -有核式管理机构组织设计为矩阵式组织设计。     

Evaluating the NASA small business innovation research program: preliminary evidence of a trade-off between commercialization and basic research

In 1982, the Small Business Innovation Development Act established the small business innovation research (SBIR) program. This program reserves a percentage of federal agencies’ extramural R&D budgets for research projects conducted by small businesses. When this Act was reauthorized in 1992, the selection criteria for funding dramatically increased the likelihood of funding for projects that promised to lead to commercial success. Using data from a survey of the SBIR program award recipients at NASA Langley Research Center, we address three questions about this change: (i) was there a shift to projects with more commercial potential? (ii) did these projects experience higher rates of commercial success? and (iii) was there a reduction in basic research accompanying the increased commercial success? Our analysis suggests, the answer to all three of these questions is ‘yes’.     

技术市场与技术创新互动发展的机理分析

从市场功能实现的视角对技术市场发展与技术创新的关系进行分析,剖析了技术市场与技术创新互动发展的机理,构建了二者互动发展的理论模型。分析结果表明,技术市场与技术创新的关系并不仅仅是单向的促进作用,二者的关系是互动发展的。     

Managing technology alliances: The case for knowledge management

Organizations need to form alliances with external entities in order to acquire or access resources outside ones bounds. In recent times, we have seen an increased number of alliances geared towards acquiring technology capabilities. Alliances for technology capabilities include software application licensing agreements, access to technological infrastructure, and accessing technological know-how. While a lot of attention has been paid to the financial, economic, legal, and architectural issues of such arrangements, one dimension has been under debated and discussed—the knowledge component. Knowledge is the critical resource that is exchanged, managed, and integrated, in technology alliances. Managing knowledge in and around technology alliances is of utmost importance if we want to reap the strategic and operational benefits of such engagements. In this case study analysis, we share crucial knowledge management concerns to bear in mind while constructing, governing, and terminating technology alliances.     

我国技术市场发展的机遇、挑战和战略选择研究

我国技术市场经过30多年的发展,已经进入新的发展机遇期,新科技革命、经济转型、创新型国家建设以及加快全面建成小康社会的战略目标都为技术市场的发展带来了难得的机遇;与此同时,伴随机遇而来的是挑战,现有管理体制问题、技术市场发展的机制性缺陷、技术市场发展的观念性障碍以及国际技术转移等都给技术市场发展提出了新挑战。面对机遇与挑战,国家需要作出战略性的抉择,通过促进技术交易产业平稳健康发展、进一步活跃技术交易、建立和完善国家技术转移体系和技术市场法律体系、建立健全技术市场管理和组织等措施加快技术市场的发展。