When Does Start-Up Innovation Spur the Gale of Creative Destruction?

This paper is motivated by the substantial differences in start-up commercialization strategies observed across different high-technology sectors. Specifically, we evaluate the conditions under which start-up innovators earn their returns on innovation through product market competition with more established firms (such as in many areas of the electronics industry) as opposed to cooperation with these incumbents (either through licensing, strategic alliances or outright acquisition as observed in the pharmaceutical industry). While the former strategy challenges incumbent market power, the latter strategy tends to reinforce current market structure. Though the benefits of cooperation include forestalling the costs of competition in the product market and avoiding duplicative investment in sunk assets, imperfections in the market for ideas' may lead to competitive behavior in the product market. Specifically, if the transaction costs of bargaining are high or incumbents are likely to expropriate ideas from start-up innovators, then product market competition is more likely. We test these ideas using a novel dataset of the commercialization strategies of over 100 start-up innovators. Our principal robust findings are that the probability of cooperation is increasing in the innovator's control over intellectual property rights, association with venture capitalists (which reduce their transactional bargaining costs), and in the relative cost of control of specialized complementary assets. Our conclusion is that the propensity for pro-competitive benefits from start-up innovators reflects an earlier market failure, in the market for ideas.'

Do Venture Capitalists Affect Commercialization Strategies at Start-ups?

I empirically study the effect of venture capital (VC) on product development and commercialization strategy of start-up organizations. In doing so, I segment entrant commercialization strategies into two camps according to competitive effect: to “cooperate” is to license-out technology or be acquired, while to “compete” is to develop technology independently. Building on the work of Gans, Hsu, and Stern (2000) on the drivers of entrant commercialization strategy, this paper examines the direct and indirect effects of VC on product development and competition. I start with two important determinants of start-up commercialization strategy: (1) the entrant’s relative investment cost of acquiring and controlling complementary assets needed to successfully commercialize its innovation, and (2) the entrant’s ability to effectively protect its intellectual property. I then test a novel sample of 118 technology-based projects divided almost evenly between two mechanisms of entrepreneurial finance. These two mechanisms differ in institutional detail in ways that allow a quasi-experiment of the effect of VC on start-up commercialization strategy. The U.S. Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) program provides a grant to R&D without taking equity in a start-up or changing the corporate governance of project development. In contrast, VCs take an equity stake and participate in corporate governance in exchange for capital. Neither of these financing mechanisms, however, alters the underlying complementary asset or intellectual property regime associated with the project. Two main findings about the commercialization strategy and product market effects of venture capital emerge: (1) VCbacking skews commercialization strategies across industries toward cooperating, and (2) VCs make their portfolio firms more sensitive to the business environment.Center for Innovation in Product Development at MIT through NSF Cooperative Agreement EEC-9529140 is gratefully acknowledged

Unleashing Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Europe: People, Places and Policies. Report of a CEPS Task Force February 2017

This report sets out the elements for the design of a streamlined and future-proof policy on innovation and entrepreneurship in Europe. It is the result of a collective effort led by CEPS, which formed a Task Force on Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the EU, composed of authoritative scholars, industry experts, entrepreneurs, practitioners and representatives of EU and international institutions. The result of these deliberations is a set of policy recommendations aimed at improving the overall environment and approach for entrepreneurship and innovation in Europe and a new paradigmatic understanding of the role that innovation and entrepreneurship can and should play within the overall context of EU policy. These recommendations are based on a new, multi-dimensional approach to both innovation and entrepreneurship as social phenomena and to the policies that are meant to promote them

Why do incumbents fund startups? A study of the antecedents of corporate venture capital in China

Established firms are instrumental in funding entrepreneurial ventures, a practice known as corporate venture capital (CVC). Yet, our knowledge of the reasons firms engage in CVC is calibrated mainly on data from the United States and Europe. Such a restricted focus limits our understanding of CVC practices and objectives. Accordingly, we adopt an abductive approach to study the antecedents of CVC in China. The country is a vibrant entrepreneurial setting, second only to the USA in total startup numbers and funding amounts. We construct a comprehensive data of Chinese CVCs during the late 2010s by integrate Chinese and international databases. Cross-industry analyses of CVC patterns underscore a novel objective; one that is predominantly associated with harnessing growth through market expansion rather than the prevailing view of CVC as a window on technology. The findings mirror the features of the Chinese setting, where entrepreneurs profit from the dramatic expansion in economic activity and serve as a vehicle to leverage the global innovation frontier

The inside track: entrepreneurs’ corporate experience and startups' access to incumbent partners’ resources

Startups are increasingly turning to incumbent firms for venture capital, anticipating access to the investor’s knowledge and complementary assets. However, startups' eventual access to these resources varies widely. This paper highlights one important driver of such variance, whether startups' managers were previously employed by an incumbent in the same industry. Using data from the life-sciences, I find that such corporate experience can precipitate technical knowledge flows to startups by enabling the generation of relational capital with incumbent firm managers. It also helps startups navigate incumbents’ decision-processes to formalize access to downstream complementary assets via alliances. The former effect is stronger when corporate experience is technology-focused, the latter when it is commercialization-focused. Corporate experience at the investing incumbent firm amplifies informal knowledge-flows but not formal alliances

Differences in opportunity evaluation between corporate and independent entrepreneurs.

Opportunity evaluation is a critical step in the process of entrepreneurship and is the main precursor to entrepreneurial action. This is true for both corporate entrepreneurs and independent entrepreneurs. However, these two groups may evaluate entrepreneurial opportunities in different ways because they operate in different contexts and have different decision-making schemas. In my dissertation, I use an “entrepreneurial cognition” perspective to explore such differences. By using two major theoretical lenses – i.e. resource availability and tolerance for uncertainty – and employing a conjoint experimental design, I compare and contrast decision policies of corporate and independent entrepreneurs captured in real time. Also, with reference to social cognitive theory, I account for the effect of individual differences and environmental conditions on opportunity assessments. The findings of this dissertation shed light on differing cognitions of entrepreneurs in corporate and non-corporate contexts and explain their decision-making priorities and tradeoffs. Findings provide evidence that the four opportunity attributes studies – i.e. knowledge of customer demand, resource-relatedness, novelty, and entry scale – significantly affect willingness of entrepreneurs to pursue opportunities, but that the effect for all attributes is stronger among independent entrepreneurs. Findings of this study also demonstrate that gender, entrepreneurial experience, and entrepreneurial self-efficacy (as individual characteristics) and industry munificence (as an environmental factor) have significant impacts on opportunity assessments of corporate and independent entrepreneurs, but with varying levels. More detailed discussion of results and implications for research and practice are provided

A survey of venture capital research

This survey reviews the growing body of academic work on venture capital. It lays out the major data sources used. It examines the work on venture capital investments in companies, looking at issues of selection, contracting, post-investment services and exits. The survey considers recent work on organizational structures of venture capital firms, and the relationship between general and limited partners. It discusses the work on the returns to venture capital investments. It also examines public policies, and the role of venture capital in the economy at large.

From Value Protection to Value Creation: Rethinking Corporate Governance Standards for Firm Innovation

A company’s pro-innovation needs are often met by the exploitation of its resources, widely defined. The resource-based theory of the firm provides immense empirical insights into how a firm’s corporate governance factors can contribute to promoting innovation. However, these implications may conflict with the prevailing standards of corporate governance imposed on many securities markets for listed companies, which have developed based on theoretical models supporting a shareholder-centered and agency-based theory of the firm. Although prevailing corporate governance standards can to an extent support firm innovation, tensions are created in some circumstances where companies pit their corporate governance compliance against resource-based needs that promote innovation. In the present context of steady internationalization and convergence in corporate governance standards in global securities markets towards a shareholder-centered agency-based model, we argue that there is a need to provide some room for accommodating the resource-based needs for companies in relation to promoting innovation. We explore a number of options and suggest that the most practicable option would be the development of recognized exceptions that deviate from prevailing corporate governance standards. We further suggest as to how an exceptions-based regime can be implemented in the U.K. and U.S., comparing the rules-based regime in the U.S. with the principles-based regime in the U.K

Specialists, generalists, or both? Founders’ multidimensional breadth of experience and entrepreneurial ventures’ fundraising at IPO

Different streams of research have led to contradictory conclusions about the venture performance implications of founders’ breadth of experience. While extant empirical studies have explored the performance implications of founders’ breadth of experience at the start-up stage, we focus on the later stage of the initial public offering (IPO). We theorize that investors categorize venture founders based on two salient dimensions—their industry and functional background—and we relate this categorization to resource acquisition at IPO. To test our model, we use a hand-collected dataset of 175 entrepreneurial IPOs in the Alternative Investment Market in London (2002–2013) and two randomized experiments. We theorize and find that compared to entrepreneurial ventures with a lead founder specializing in one industry or one function, investors generally devalue those with a category-spanning lead founder (a generalist). However, devaluation is less severe when a lead founder is a generalist in one dimension (e.g., industry) but a specialist in the other dimension (e.g., function). We also theorize and empirically test trust as a mechanism for the generalist penalty. Specifically, audience members (investors) have low trust in a generalist producer (founder) in contexts where the two parties consider entering into a partnership (equity investment at IPO), and so that generalist producer is devalued. Finally, we show that an external expert endorsement—in our case, from intensive venture capital affiliations—offsets the generalist penalty, especially when category spanning occurs in multiple category dimensions