Organizational paths of commercializing patented inventions: The effects of transaction costs, firm capabilities, and collaborative ties

This study examines the factors affecting modes of commercializing patented inventions using a novel dataset based on a survey of U.S. inventors. We find that technological uncertainty and possessing complementary assets raise the propensity for internal commercialization. We find that R&D collaboration with firms in a horizontal relationship is likely to increase the propensity to license the invention. In addition, the paper shows that macro-level environment conditions that affect exchange conditions, such as technology familiarity, influence the effects of capabilities on governance choice.transaction cost economics; knowledge-based view; collaboration ties; commercialization; innovation; patent

Protecting Their Intellectual Assets: Appropriability Conditions and Why U.S. Manufacturing Firms Patent (or Not)

Based on a survey questionnaire administered to 1478 R&D labs in the U.S. manufacturing sector in 1994, we find that firms typically protect the profits due to invention with a range of mechanisms, including patents, secrecy, lead time advantages and the use of complementary marketing and manufacturing capabilities. Of these mechanisms, however, patents tend to be the least emphasized by firms in the majority of manufacturing industries, and secrecy and lead time tend to be emphasized most heavily. A comparison of our results with the earlier survey findings of Levin et al. [1987] suggest that patents may be relied upon somewhat more heavily by larger firms now than in the early 1980s. For the protection of product innovations, secrecy now appears to be much more heavily employed across most industries than previously. Our results on the motives to patent indicate that firms patent for reasons that often extend beyond directly profiting from a patented innovation through either its commercialization or licensing. In addition to the prevention of copying, the most prominent motives for patenting include the prevention of rivals from patenting related inventions (i.e., patent blocking'), the use of patents in negotiations and the prevention of suits. We find that firms commonly patent for different reasons in discrete' product industries, such as chemicals, versus complex' product industries, such as telecommunications equipment or semiconductors. In the former, firms appear to use their patents commonly to block the development of substitutes by rivals, and in the latter, firms are much more likely to use patents to force rivals into negotiations.

Shifting Patterns of Nitrogen Excretion and Amino Acid Catabolism Capacity during the Life Cycle of the Sea Lamprey (\u3cem\u3ePetromyzon mariunus\u3c/em\u3e)

The jawless fish, the sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus), spends part of its life as a burrow-dwelling, suspension-feeding larva (ammocoete) before undergoing a metamorphosis into a free swimming, parasitic juvenile that feeds on the blood of fishes. We predicted that animals in this juvenile, parasitic stage have a great capacity for catabolizing amino acids when large quantities of protein-rich blood are ingested. The sixfold to 20-fold greater ammonia excretion rates (JAmm) in postmetamorphic (nonfeeding) and parasitic lampreys compared with ammocoetes suggested that basal rates of amino acid catabolism increased following metamorphosis. This was likely due to a greater basal amino acid catabolizing capacity in which there was a sixfold higher hepatic glutamate dehydrogenase (GDH) activity in parasitic lampreys compared with ammocoetes. Immunoblotting also revealed that GDH quantity was 10-fold and threefold greater in parasitic lampreys than in ammocoetes and upstream migrant lampreys, respectively. Higher hepatic alanine and aspartate aminotransferase activities in the parasitic lampreys also suggested an enhanced amino acid catabolizing capacity in this life stage. In contrast to parasitic lampreys, the twofold larger free amino acid pool in the muscle of upstream migrant lampreys confirmed that this period of natural starvation is accompanied by a prominent proteolysis. Carbamoyl phosphate synthetase III was detected at low levels in the liver of parasitic and upstream migrant lampreys, but there was no evidence of extrahepatic (muscle, intestine) urea production via the ornithine urea cycle. However, detection of arginase activity and high concentrations of arginine in the liver at all life stages examined infers that arginine hydrolysis is an important source of urea. We conclude that metamorphosis is accompanied by a metabolic reorganization that increases the capacity of parasitic sea lampreys to catabolize intermittently large amino acid loads arising from the ingestion of protein rich blood from their prey/hosts. The subsequent generation of energy-rich carbon skeletons can then be oxidized or retained for glycogen and fatty acid synthesis, which are essential fuels for the upstream migratory and spawning phases of the sea lamprey’s life cycle

How ’Open ’ is Innovation in the US and Japan?: Evidence from the RIETI-Georgia Tech inventor survey

While individual inventors are key to technological progress, it is becoming increasingly necessary for inventors and their firms to exploit information and capabilities outside the firm in order to combine onefs own resources with resources from the external environment. To better understand the collaborative process in inventions, we collected detailed information on a sample of triadic patents, focusing on the invention process, sources of ideas, and collaboration (the RIETI-Georgia Tech inventor survey), with over 1900 responses from the US and over 3600 responses from Japan. Our results suggest that in both countries, just over 10% of inventions involved an external co-inventor and about 30% involved external (non-co-inventor) collaborators (with the rate of collaboration somewhat higher in Japan). Cross-organizational co-inventions increase as firm size declines, especially in Japan. In both countries, vertical collaborations (both co-inventions and other collaborations) with users and suppliers were the most common. The most important knowledge sources were similar in the two countries: patents, customers, publications, and information from other parts of the firm, although their relative rankings varied somewhat. In particular, patent literature is a relatively more important information source in Japan and scientific literature is relatively more important in the US. Since our evidence suggest that inventors see literature globally, such difference does not seem to be driven by the difference of the disclosed literature (for an example, more early patent disclosure in Japan) as suggested by earlier literature but by that of the incentive and capability of the inventors. While in both countries most R&D funding is provided internally, venture capital and government funding play a greater role in the US than in Japan, with venture capital funds especially important for the smallest US firms. On the other hand, industry funding plays a greater role for university researchersf inventions in Japan. There is some evidence that gopen innovationh through collaborations enhances not only the technical significance of the invention, but also the probability of its commercialization through, for an example, vertical collaboration facilitating better matches between the needs of customers or the capabilities of suppliers.

The R&D Process in the U.S. and Japan: Major findings from the RIETI-Georgia Tech inventor survey

This paper analyzes and compares the objective, the nature and the performance of R&D projects in the US and Japan, based on the first large scale systematic survey of inventors, focusing on the R&D projects yielding triadic patents. Major findings are the following. First, the projects for enhancing the existing business line of a firm account for a large share of R&D projects in both countries, confirming the view that the R&D investment is significantly conditioned by the existing complementary asset of a firm. In both countries, the inventions from R&D for existing business have the highest in-house utilization rate but use least the scientific and technical literature for their conceptions, while the reverse is the case for the inventions from R&D for new technology base (or for cultivating seeds). R&D projects for enhancing the technology base are much more common in the US. This difference can be partly accounted for by US inventors being more likely to have a PhD, but not by the differences in the structure of finance. US government financial support is relatively more targeted to projects for existing business and US venture capital provides support mainly projects for creating new business (6% of them), but not for more upstream projects. Only about 20-30% of the projects are for process innovation in both countries, providing direct evidence for the earlier findings that were based on US patent information. Product innovation generates process patents more often in Japan than in the US (25% vs. 10%), while product innovation projects are relatively more numerous in Japan. In both countries a significant share of inventions (more than 20%) were not the result of an R&D project, and a substantial proportion of such inventions are valued among the top 10% of patents, suggesting that R&D expenditure significantly underestimates inventive activities. A US invention is more often an unexpected by-product of an R&D project (11%) than in Japan (3.4%). The two countries have surprisingly similar distributions of R&D projects in man month and the average team size. In both countries, smaller firms tend to have relatively more high-value patents. In the US, inventors from very small firms (with less than 100 employees) and universities jointly account for more than one quarter of the top 10% inventions, even though they account for only 14% of all inventions. Man-months expended for an invention has a significant correlation with the performance of the R&D projects for existing business, less so for new business and not at all for those enhancing the technology base, suggesting substantial heterogeneity by project types in the determinants of the performance and in the uncertainty. A PhD has a significant correlation with R&D project performance especially for new business.