Commercialization and Other Uses of Patents in Japan and the US: Major Findings From the RIETI-Georgia Tech Inventor Survey

RIETI Discussion PaperBased on the newly implemented inventor survey in Japan and the US, we have examined the commercialization and other uses of triadic patents. Although the two countries have a similar overall level of commercialization (60% of the triadic patents), the structure is different: in Japan, we see a higher incidence of in-house use relative to the overall level of commercialization, more inventions being licensed and less used for startups. We also see more multiple uses (in-house and license/startup) in Japan. In both countries licensing plays a relatively important role for commercializing the inventions from R&D targeted to new business and to enhancing the technology base. Consistently, licensing becomes more important as a patenting reason as the invention involves more scientific knowledge. The key difference in startups between the two countries is a high incidence of the inventions of university researchers being used for startups in the US (35%). In both countries strategic holding (use of the patents for blocking and the prevention of inventing around) is one of the major reasons of non-commercialized patents. Only 20% of the internally commercialized patents can be used on a stand-alone basis in both countries, and both the incidence of cross-license conditional on license and the incidence of license itself tend to increase with the size of the bundle of the patents to be jointly used with that invention. As appropriation measures, the first mover advantage (FMA) in commercialization and the FMA in R&D are the most important in both countries, while the latter becomes more important as the invention involves more scientific knowledge. The US inventors rank patent enforcement significantly higher than possessing complementary capabilities, while the reverse is the case for Japanese inventors. In addition, enhancing the exclusive exploitation of the invention is a more important patenting reason in the US. The fact that the commercialization rate of patented inventions is quite similar between the two countries despite of the significant difference of the appreciation of exclusivity indicates that exclusivity may promote exploitation in certain areas and retard it in others. Finally, non-conventional patenting reasons are also important in both countries: blocking and pure defense are at least as important as licensing, and corporate reputation is an important reason for patenting by small firms

What influences the speed of prototyping? An empirical investigation of twenty software startups

It is essential for startups to quickly experiment business ideas by building tangible prototypes and collecting user feedback on them. As prototyping is an inevitable part of learning for early stage software startups, how fast startups can learn depends on how fast they can prototype. Despite of the importance, there is a lack of research about prototyping in software startups. In this study, we aimed at understanding what are factors influencing different types of prototyping activities. We conducted a multiple case study on twenty European software startups. The results are two folds, firstly we propose a prototype-centric learning model in early stage software startups. Secondly, we identify factors occur as barriers but also facilitators for prototyping in early stage software startups. The factors are grouped into (1) artifacts, (2) team competence, (3) collaboration, (4) customer and (5) process dimensions. To speed up a startups progress at the early stage, it is important to incorporate the learning objective into a well-defined collaborative approach of prototypingComment: This is the author's version of the work. Copyright owner's version can be accessed at doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57633-6_2, XP2017, Cologne, German

Beyond Metropolitan Startup Rates: Regional Factors Associated with Startup Growth

Understanding what fosters -- and hinders -- firm formation and growth at the metropolitan level across the United States is a challenge. Entrepreneurship can be measured by a variety of indicators, and they each can tell somewhat different stories. Furthermore, because entrepreneurship can refer to the growth of firms from a startup stage to mid- or large-scale, no one dataset covers the full range of companies that fall in this category. This report contributes to the Kauffman Foundation's recent series of analyses on the rate of business creation in metropolitan areas. Going beyond identifying metropolitan areas with higher rates of entrepreneurship, we analyze what regional factors are associated, or unassociated, with entrepreneurial activity. Understanding what drives entrepreneurship at the regional level -- especially high-growth business creation -- will help policymakers and entrepreneurship supporters know where to invest their efforts

Community Aliveness: Discovering Interaction Decay Patterns in Online Social Communities

Online Social Communities (OSCs) provide a medium for connecting people, sharing news, eliciting information, and finding jobs, among others. The dynamics of the interaction among the members of OSCs is not always growth dynamics. Instead, a $\textit{decay}$ or $\textit{inactivity}$ dynamics often happens, which makes an OSC obsolete. Understanding the behavior and the characteristics of the members of an inactive community help to sustain the growth dynamics of these communities and, possibly, prevents them from being out of service. In this work, we provide two prediction models for predicting the interaction decay of community members, namely: a Simple Threshold Model (STM) and a supervised machine learning classification framework. We conducted evaluation experiments for our prediction models supported by a $\textit{ground truth}$ of decayed communities extracted from the StackExchange platform. The results of the experiments revealed that it is possible, with satisfactory prediction performance in terms of the F1-score and the accuracy, to predict the decay of the activity of the members of these communities using network-based attributes and network-exogenous attributes of the members. The upper bound of the prediction performance of the methods we used is $0.91$ and $0.83$ for the F1-score and the accuracy, respectively. These results indicate that network-based attributes are correlated with the activity of the members and that we can find decay patterns in terms of these attributes. The results also showed that the structure of the decayed communities can be used to support the alive communities by discovering inactive members.Comment: pre-print for the 4th European Network Intelligence Conference - 11-12 September 2017 Duisburg, German

Democratizing Entry: Banking Deregulations, Financing Constraints, and Entrepreneurship

We examine entrepreneurship and creative destruction following US banking deregulations using Census Bureau data. US banking reforms brought about exceptional growth in both entrepreneurship and business closures. The vast majority of closures, however, were the new ventures themselves. Although we do find evidence for the standard story of creative destruction, the most pronounced impact was a massive increase in churning among new entrants. We argue that creative destruction requires many businesses failures along with the few great successes. The successes are very difficult to identify ex ante, which is why democratizing entry is an important trait of well-functioning capital markets.banking, financial constraints, entrepreneurship, creative destruction, growth.

Who Are User Entrepreneurs? Findings on Innovation, Founder Characteristics, and Firm Characteristics

Documents the prevalence of innovators who create products or services for their own use then start firms, by industry and type. Examines founder and firm characteristics, revenue growth, job creation, R&D investment, and intellectual property creation

Video Game Development in a Rush: A Survey of the Global Game Jam Participants

Video game development is a complex endeavor, often involving complex software, large organizations, and aggressive release deadlines. Several studies have reported that periods of "crunch time" are prevalent in the video game industry, but there are few studies on the effects of time pressure. We conducted a survey with participants of the Global Game Jam (GGJ), a 48-hour hackathon. Based on 198 responses, the results suggest that: (1) iterative brainstorming is the most popular method for conceptualizing initial requirements; (2) continuous integration, minimum viable product, scope management, version control, and stand-up meetings are frequently applied development practices; (3) regular communication, internal playtesting, and dynamic and proactive planning are the most common quality assurance activities; and (4) familiarity with agile development has a weak correlation with perception of success in GGJ. We conclude that GGJ teams rely on ad hoc approaches to development and face-to-face communication, and recommend some complementary practices with limited overhead. Furthermore, as our findings are similar to recommendations for software startups, we posit that game jams and the startup scene share contextual similarities. Finally, we discuss the drawbacks of systemic "crunch time" and argue that game jam organizers are in a good position to problematize the phenomenon.Comment: Accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Game

Chasing Sustainability on the Net : International research on 69 journalistic pure players and their business models

This report outlines how online-based journalistic startups have created their economical locker in the evolving media ecology. The research introduces the ways that startups have found sustainability in the markets of ten countries. The work is based on 69 case studies from Europe, USA and Japan. The case analysis shows that business models can be divided into two groups. The storytelling-oriented business models are still prevalent in our findings. These are the online journalistic outlets that produce original content – news and stories for audiences. But the other group, service-oriented business models, seems to be growing. This group consists of sites that don’t try to monetize the journalistic content as such but rather focus on carving out new functionality. The project was able to identify several revenue sources: advertising, paying for content, affiliate marketing, donations, selling data or services, organizing events, freelancing and training or selling merchandise. Where it was hard to evidence entirely new revenue sources, it was however possible to find new ways in which revenue sources have been combined or reconfigured. The report also offers practical advice for those who are planning to start their own journalistic site