The role of contracts and intellectual property rights in open innovation

Our exploratory empirical study, based on interviews and a survey of firms, addresses a number of questions on the role of formal contracts and intellectual property rights (IPR) in the context of firm-to-firm open innovation (OI). We find that firms active in OI have a very strong preference for the governance of their OI relationships with other firms through formal contracts. Also, despite the open nature of OI, firms still see IPR as highly relevant to the protection of their innovative capabilities. We find the degree of openness of firms, their formal legal attitude, and the competitive dynamics of their product market environment to be related to the preference of OI firms for IPR. Furthermore, the strength of firms’ internal R&D capabilities increases the positive relationship between openness and the preference for IPR.     

培育创新文化重在保护知识产权

党中央、国务院提出我国要在2020年进入创新型国家行列。要实现这一伟大的战略目标,必须提高我国的自主创新能力。政府机关、企事业单位和个人要积极营造保护知识产权的文化环境、法律环境、政策环境和制度环境,加大对自主知识产权的保护力度,形成一种创新文化。     

Differentiation of innovation strategies based on pharmaceutical licensing agreements: Insight from Korean pharmaceutical firms

The paper aims to show how licensing behaviour can be used to differentiate distinct innovation strategies. Information on in-licensing and out-licensing agreements is used to guide the development of a framework that details the licensing firm’s relational preference for internal and external orientation. Using firm-level data of the Korean pharmaceutical firms, the study categorised the distinct strategic orientations of firms based on the proposed matrix model. The results indicated that firms with higher R&D (research and development) expenditures have a tendency to greater external exploitation of technological knowledge than firms with low R&D spending. The study provides potential avenues for targeting of licensing partners from the perspective of firms seeking to in-license or out-license their innovations.     

Mergers and innovation: evidence from a panel of US firms*

Mergers lead to larger firms and a less competitive market structure, but their effects on innovation are not clear. Mergers may improve innovation incentives by promoting economies of scope and scale, R&D activities, and increasing the ability to deal with uncertainties. However, mergers may also discourage innovation by reducing competition, increasing costs, and decreasing production and R&D efficiencies. In this study, we investigate merger impacts on innovation using a panel data consisting of four different data sets on publicly traded US manufacturing firms from 1980 to 2003. Our proxy for innovation is based on citation-weighted patent stocks. In our estimation model, we control for endogeneity using instrumental variables and factors such as market share, size, industry, and time. We find that mergers are positively and significantly correlated with firms’ innovation. Our findings also indicate that merger effect on innovation is heterogeneous across industries, increases with market share, and is greater in the long run. Our findings are robust to alternative measures of innovation.     

论中国旅游产业知识产权问题及对策

中国旅游业蓬勃发展的同时,旅游产业知识产权问题亦日益突出。分析当前中国旅游产业知识产权存在的诸多问题,提出相应保护对策,对促进中国旅游业健康有序发展具有重要意义。     

Open technology innovation activity and firm value: evidence from Korean firms

Despite the importance of Open Technology Innovation Activity (OTIA) for firm value, the literature investigating effects of OTIA announcements of developing country firms is not known in international academic circles. Our study using an event study approach examines the effects of OTIA (technology import and joint R&D) announcements of firms in Korea, one of the leading developing and highly innovative countries. We find that the announcements of OTIA produce positive average abnormal returns. Interestingly, unlike the prior studies on developed country firms, OTIA with firms in the homogenous industry leads to greater firm value than that involving firms in heterogenic industries. This implies an importance of a technological fusion with external firms in different industries for value of developing country firms. In addition, this article finds no home bias that a nationality of partner firms is not essential for the relation between OTIA and value of firms.     

How open search strategies align with firms’ radical and incremental innovation: evidence from China

The purpose of this paper is to describe the ways in which open search strategies (i.e. open search breadth and open search depth) align with firms’ radical and incremental innovation. By analysing survey data collected from 162 firms in Chinese high-tech markets, we found that a firm pursuing radical innovation benefits more from open search breadth than open search depth to achieve its performance goals; in contrast, a firm processing incremental innovation benefits more from open search depth than open search breadth to improve its performance. Based on these results, managers should pay attention to the fit between open search strategies and radical/incremental innovation. This study not only contributes to the studies of search strategies by identifying the parallel relationship of open search strategies and two types of innovation, but also enriches the theory of open innovation with an empirical analysis.     

中国中医药产业升级路径选择——基于全球价值链视角

随着世界经济深度一体化,嵌入全球价值链的中医药产业面临着前所未有的机遇和挑战,而自主创新能力不足、产业优化升级困难、知识产权保护意识不强等原因,严重制约着中医药产业的可持续发展。积极构建自主创新体系,提高持续创新能力,加强社会信用制度供给,走集群化发展模式等一系列的措施与制度安排,是中医药产业可持续发展的现实路径选择。     

知识产权网络结构范式研究

现代经济环境下,产业组织呈现出垂直分离的特征,专注于核心能力的不同企业利用知识产权之间的联结关系组成了一种新型的网络组织——企业知识产权网络,提高了对外部环境的适应能力。从产业组织垂直分离出发,首先,探讨了知识产权网络产生的背景,界定了知识产权网络的基本内涵,分析了知识产权网络的构成要素以及主要的联结方式。然后,结合案例讨论了知识产权网络联盟成员的3种类型。研究表明,知识产权网络已经成为现代产业组织的重要形式。     

试论知识产权海关边境保护中刑事协作机制的障碍和解决对策

本文以当前海关与公安机关共同打击侵犯知识产权犯罪的刑事协作机制为视角，通过从立法与执法层面对知识产权边境保护刑事协作机制中存在有关障碍的揭示和分析，提出了完善立法、协调冲突、加强交流等多项障碍解决对策。     

International intellectual property rights: Effects on growth, welfare and income inequality

What are the effects of strengthening developing countries’ protection for intellectual property rights on economic growth and income inequality in the global economy? To analyze this question, we develop a two-country R&;D-based growth model with wealth heterogeneity. In this growth-theoretic framework, we show that strengthening patent protection in either country increases economic growth and income inequality in both countries. Furthermore, we derive the Nash equilibrium level of patent breadth and find that it is sub-optimally low relative to globally optimal patent breadth due to the positive externality effects that are captured by a spillover parameter.     

Strategic adjustment between innovation and production: generation of integrated archetypes in Spanish service firms

This paper investigates empirically the strategic alignment between innovation and production strategies in a sample of service firms in Spain. It employs the integrated archetypes approach to analyse a dataset of unique, manually collected, firm responses. The results highlight differences in behaviour patterns underpinning both kinds of strategic decisions and, coherent with alignment theory, differential firm performance.     

Resolving the innovation puzzle of latecomers: the case of Taiwan

In the currently rapidly changing business world, innovation has not only become the key to survival and success, but also the defining challenge of organisations. For latecomer firms, however, because of their inherent resource constraints, innovation has become a far more complex undertaking, similar to a multidimensional puzzle. Although there have been an increasing number of practitioner-based surveys, a discrepancy still remains between academia and industry concerning the role and importance of R&D in innovation. Therefore, this study carried out an industry–university–institution survey of Taiwan, based on a multidimensional framework of the innovation puzzle: human, R&D, flow and connection. The results reveal several interesting clues and provide a better understanding of the innovation puzzle for latecomers, and more importantly, resolves the puzzle that could help latecomers identify where new opportunities lie and what weaknesses they must strengthen.     

Intellectual property rights and the upgrading of the global value chain status

The present paper explores how intellectual property rights (IPR) protection affects an economy’s status in global value chains (GVC) by introducing IPR protection into the sequential production model. We find that a suitable IPR protection system that matches the phase of economic and technological development a country has reached is the key for developing countries to upgrade their status in GVC, which are dominated by multinational firms from developed countries. Empirical analysis with multinational panel data for 55 countries from 2005 to 2015 provides evidence in support of the predictions of this model, although the GVC‐enhancing effects of IPR protection are heterogeneous for developing and developed countries. The empirical conclusions are robust after using the instrumental variable method and controlling for endogeneity.     

The governance of agro- and pharmaceutical biotechnology innovation: Public policy and industrial strategy

Multinational companies in the life science sector are heavily influenced by government policies and regulations and in turn attempt to influence these actors nationally and internationally. This paper focuses on recent and on-going research, principally on the agro-biotechnology and, to a lesser extent, on the pharmaceutical industries, covering the evolution of policy and regulation in Europe, how policies are influenced by stakeholder pressures and how policy in turn influences company strategies for product development. We focus particularly on new ‘governance’ agendas in Europe and consider the relative impacts of enabling, constraining, discriminating and indiscriminate policies on company strategies as part of our development of an integrated approach to policy and governance. We also consider changes in external operating environments for multinational companies and compare past histories and present pressures on agro-biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies. The paper argues, with evidence, that a more enabling and discriminating policy and regulatory environment can achieve public goals more efficiently and effectively, taking account of impacts on innovation, than more blunt policy instruments. This type of environment takes into account the resources and capabilities available to firms and research laboratories rather than relying on broad brush carrot and stick approaches.     

Inbound open innovation in biopharmaceutical firms: unpacking the role of absorptive capacity

In this study, we extend recent attempts to clarify the role of antecedents of absorptive capacity in realising purposive inflows of external knowledge in the biopharmaceutical industry. By assuming that internal R&D resources contribute to absorptive capacity as a multidimensional concept, we propose a framework for the integrated analysis of the interactions between the different antecedents of absorptive capacity and inbound open innovation of biopharmaceutical firms. Our analysis relies on a set-theoretic approach and uses fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to study a set of selected Italian biopharmaceutical firms. The analysis reveals that biopharmaceutical companies with a diversified R&D business domain and an extended entrepreneurial scientific network are likely to adopt an inbound open innovation strategy.     

Appropriability mechanisms,innovation, and productivity: evidence from the UK

ABSTRACT

We use an extended version of the well-established Crepon, Duguet, and Mairesse model [1998. “Research, Innovation and Productivity: An Econometric Analysis at the Firm Level.” Economics of Innovation and New Technology 7 (2): 115–158] to model the relationship between appropriability mechanisms, innovation, and firm-level productivity. We enrich this model in three ways: (1) We compare estimates obtained using a broader definition of innovation spending to those that use R&D spending. (2) We assume that a firm simultaneously innovates and chooses among different appropriability methods to protect the innovation. (3) We estimate the impact of innovation output on firm productivity conditional on the choice of appropriability mechanism. We find that firms that innovate and rate formal methods for the protection of intellectual property highly are more productive than other firms, but that the same does not hold in the case of informal methods of protection, except possibly for large firms as opposed to SMEs. We also find that this result is strongest for firms in the services, trade, and utility sectors, and negative in the manufacturing sector.     

Convergence and reorientation via open innovation: the emergence of nutraceuticals

The use of networked organisational arrangements to conduct exchanges is one of the most distinctive features of high-tech research-intensive industries. Advances in biotechnology and genomics research have enabled a generic technology platform that has fuelled a more ‘open’ approach to innovation and learning. This relies on collaborations between networked partners and allows for the convergence and reorientation of traditional sectors. This paper lends support to the view that some technologies can trigger a higher system level innovation, that is, in addition to the inter-firm level, an inter-industrial and inter-institutional level convergence and re-orientation process. This paper explores how this phenomenon is being witnessed in the pharmaceutical and food sectors and fast becoming a dominant logic in the emerging nutraceuticals industry.     

Inventor cooperation network effects on technology diversification: the moderating role of intellectual property protection

ABSTRACT

Technological diversification can overcome the limitations imposed by an enterprise’s single technological capability and enables enterprises to recombine resources, thereby enhancing their competitive advantage. In-house inventor cooperation can improve the efficiency of the production factor combination and expand the scope of the enterprise’s technology base. This study empirically explores the effect of in-house inventor cooperation network on technology diversification. In addition, this study further investigates the moderating effect of intellectual property protection on the inventor cooperation network and on corporate technology diversification. An enterprise inventor cooperation network is embodied by its network location characteristics. Empirical results show that the difference in the location of the inventor cooperative network exhibits different effects on the diversification of enterprise technology. Moreover, intellectual property protection significantly weakens the incentive effect of the intermediary location of inventor cooperative network on corporate technology diversification.     

提升我国纺织产业科技发展的战略研究

文章基于对各国有关纺织品贸易的技术性措施发展趋势的分析,指明了我国纺织产业提升科技水平的重要性.并探讨了我国纺织产业的科技现状以及发展科技的有利条件和不利因素,最后阐述了提升我国纺织产业科技的战略选择和具体措施。