Complementarities and spillovers in mergers: an empirical investigation using patent data

We investigate the merger behavior of firms in the plant biotechnology sector using firm-level patent data for public and private firms in the 1980s and 1990s. Conditional logit estimation is used to estimate the probability that the firms will match in mergers and spinoffs. We calculate several patent portfolio-based measures of complementarity and spillovers between firms, and find that both are important to defining a good match of acquirer and target. However, complementarities provide the more robust explanation. The mergers and spinoffs observed in plant biotechnology may have been designed to overcome the anti-commons problem of mutually blocking technology, an extreme form of complementarity. Our results highlight the need to integrate patent and competition policy.     

Exploring the role of human resources in technology out-licensing:an empirical analysis of biotech newtechnology-based firms

Out-licensing is a technology exploitation option to generate revenues without investing in downstream complementary assets. Despite its increasing strategic relevance, the strong complexity of out-licensing activity determines a substantial discrepancy in firms’ ability to extract monetary benefits from this practice. Searching for determinants of out-licensing performance, the paper focuses in particular on the role of licensing managers. Based on a multiple case study analysis involving 26 out-licensing deals executed in seven Italian biotech NTBFs, the study shows that expert scientific skills, extensive licensing practice and prior employment in multinationals, but not an intense social network, characterise successful licensing managers, while high delegation and powerful intrinsic rewards enable individual capacities of licensing managers to translate into actual economic value.     

Employee relations and innovation: an empirical analysis using patent data

This paper investigates the relationship between employee relations (ER) as tracked in the environment, social, and governance (ESG) database provided by MSCI Inc., and innovation as measured by patents and patent citations. Some ER policies, such as broadly based profit-sharing plans, stock option plans, and stock ownership, create a direct link between a firm’s performance and employee compensation and might therefore be expected to encourage successful innovation. In addition, some other aspects of ER, including good pension plans, good union relations, and a variety of specific benefits (such as flex time) might improve innovation performance through their effect on employee morale or institutional loyalty, or simply by creating incentives to stay with the firm. We find that both of these categories of ER – financial incentives and non-pecuniary motivations – have a positive effect on innovation as measured by patenting and patent citations.     

How technological innovation affects the structure of an industry: entrepreneurship evolution in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry since 1980

Challenges faced by the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry, including reduced R&D productivity and the expiration of drugs that are high in demand, are recently being addressed through technological innovation. Such innovations are highly likely to change the structure and functioning of the industry. Since 2000, biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies have actively made strategic alliance, and technological innovations have changed the source of innovation from R&D to entrepreneurship within the industry. In this study, we identify the evolution of entrepreneurship and discuss the changes caused by technological advancements since 1980 by analysing patterns of exporting and acquiring technology data from Medtrack. Over difference period, biopharmaceutical firms have gained new knowledge and improved technology, and have implemented this newly acquired knowledge and innovation to introduce drugs to the market.     

Measuring innovation in long product development cycle industries: an insight in biotechnology

This paper examines and measures innovation in the context of biotechnology firms by analysing the link between R&D, innovation performance and organisational growth. We conceptualise innovation performance as a latent construct with two dimensions: innovation efficacy and innovation efficiency. We use structural equations modelling to test the hypotheses on a data set from the biotechnology industry. Results support our innovation performance conceptualisation which is found to be especially useful to measure innovation in industries with long product development cycles. Findings also underline the importance of R&D knowledge creation for biotechnology firms.     

Organisational form and the economic impacts of innovation: the case of patent grant announcements

This study investigates the impact of corporate diversification on the value creation of patent grants. We find that focussed firms experience significantly greater market reactions to patent announcements than diversified firms. Diversification into related industries has little effect on the wealth gains of granted patents, while diversification into unrelated industries significantly reduces the wealth gains. We further find that post-announcement operating performance is significantly associated with the degree of diversification. Overall, our findings suggest that the selection of diversification as a firm's organisational structure has a negative influence on the value creation of innovation, and this influence is exacerbated when this diversification involves unrelated industries.     

Pursuing a biotechnology system of innovation in Lithuania: a conceptual framework for effective policy intervention

The focus of this paper is on Lithuania, whose government released an ambitious innovation strategy to become an innovative services hub for Northern Europe by 2015, and an innovation hub by 2020. Biotechnology has been identified as a strategic sector, and whether Lithuania will be able to achieve its ambition of a fully functioning biotechnology sectoral system of innovation will be explored. With the Lithuanian government declaring that they will intervene to achieve their innovation goals, this paper argues that sound policy intervention is possible and can be done in a way that avoids the limitations of past systemic approaches. The policy approach presented is based on a modified extended industry life cycle, and the movement of system structures through three phases – background, pre-emergence and emergence – and explains how each phase lays the groundwork for transition to the next phase.     

生物技术产业的特征及作用

生物技术产业属于高技术、高投入、高风险和高回报的行业,因其前期投入大、科技含量高、生产工艺复杂、质量要求严格、受国家扶持,所以进入壁垒高、垄断性强、利润丰厚,蕴藏着巨大的经济潜能。生物技术产业的作用是：改善医疗卫生水平;解决粮食短缺问题;对传统工业的改造;加快改变能源格局。     

The determinants of tendering periods for PPP procurement in the UK: an empirical analysis

The procurement of infrastructure projects via public–private partnerships (PPPs) is rising globally. PPPs are, however, often characterized by lengthy tendering periods, defined as the difference between contract notice and financial close. Tendering periods are important because they account for a significant proportion of overall project delivery time. Slow tendering deters bidders and thus reduces competition for contracts. We source data on 670 PPP projects in the United Kingdom and use a duration analysis model to empirically examine factors that impact tendering period duration. Our results reveal significant sectoral variation with projects in the health and housing sectors taking significantly longer to reach financial close. We also show that, after controlling for other factors, projects with higher capital values and projects that overlap with the timing of general elections are associated with significantly longer tendering periods. We further examine the impact of the competitive dialogue procurement method and find evidence that tendering periods have increased since 2006; the year competitive dialogue was introduced. We do, however, observe a significant reduction in the time between appointment of preferred bidder and financial close post-2006. This suggests that competitive dialogue is effective in reducing the scope for negotiations by preferred bidders holding quasi-monopoly advantages.     

How good are supply function equilibrium models: an empirical analysis of the ERCOT balancing market

We present an empirical analysis of a supply function equilibrium model in the Texas spot electricity market. We derive conditions for optimal bidding behavior in a spot market with ex ante bilaterally contracted sales. By estimating costs, we are able to derive a set of ex post-and ex ante-optimal supply functions and use a non-parametric behavioral model to compare our theoretically optimal supply functions to actual offers made. Our results show that with the exception of the largest generators, firms make offers with markups and markdowns far in excess of what a model of profit-maximizing behavior suggests.     

Patent text mining and informetric-based patent technology morphological analysis: an empirical study

Patent technology morphological analysis utilises the advantages of both patent information analysis and morphological analysis to provide more detailed information on current and future patent technology. Current patent technology morphological analysis methods are largely reliant on manual expertise in the construction of morphological boxes with few approaches to the evaluation of future morphological configurations. We developed a patent text mining and informetric-based patent technology morphological analysis technique. We defined the basic parameters of the morphological box as the factors in factor analysis, with a patent keywords matrix, and the clusters in clustering analysis with factor scores. Patent citation, year of patent registration, keyword frequency, and contributing factors were used to evaluate future morphological configurations. We used an empirical study of liquid crystal display wide viewing angle patents to validate our method. The Thomson Reuters Derwent Innovation Index was used to collect patent text datasets. Our study indicates that this method is feasible for the implementation of patent technology morphological analysis. Our method provides advantages in terms of cost and time reductions during morphological box construction and more flexible methods for evaluating morphological configurations. We discuss problems and possible development of our method in the last section.     

Battle royal in biotechnology: R&D vs. product vs. process innovations

Companies regard innovation as a central element of their business. However, as not all innovation types are the same, the central question is: should their announcements bring about the same effect on performance? This article analyses potential differences in firm value derived from the innovation-type announcements ‘R&;D’, ‘product’, and ‘process’, made by intensive news-generating firms such as biotech companies. The empirical application shows a significantly positive reaction to innovation announcements, with the prospect of future innovation (‘R&;D’ investment announcements) having greater impact on firm value than ‘product’ and ‘process’ innovations. Firm experience also acts as a moderator in this innovation–performance relationship, which is particularly relevant for entrepreneurs who need to develop and send credible signals indicating the value of the firm's intangible assets to the market.     

Spatial disaggregation patterns and structural determinants of job flows: an empirical analysis

The paper investigates the changes in job creation and destruction flows at a very disaggregated level of analysis. We analyse whether job flows at lower levels of spatial aggregation display regularities that are in line with national ones in a bid to disentangle the role of labour market institutions. Using a unique database of the population of firms in Trentino (a north‐eastern province of Italy) from 1991 to 2001, we find that: (1) job flows show a ‘fractal’ tendency, i.e. many regularities appear to be scale invariant (magnitude of flow and persistence) and that job flow magnitude is in line with the average values for Italy; (2) there are some qualifications to their ‘fractality’: the contribution of entrant firms to the job creation process is lower than the corresponding contribution at national level, as is the share of job destruction accounted for by exiting firms; and (3) firm size and age influence job flows.     

Using the functional analysis to understand the emergence of biomaterials within an existing biotechnology system: observations from a case study in Turkey

ABSTRACT

The paper applies a functional approach to the analysis of an emerging technology within an innovation system (IS) in a developing country. By doing so, the paper identifies the advantages and drawbacks of the approach through a dynamic analysis and highlights the life cycle of an IS within which a new technology is emerging. This is done empirically by analysing the emergence of biosimilars within the infant Turkish biotechnology system mainly from the perspective of firms. Our analysis of the Turkish case illustrates how the tool of functional approach could be valuable in understanding the dynamics of a technology in a developing country context. Policy suggestions and implications of the study are presented as concluding remarks.     

Prototyping sustainable mobility practices: user-generated data in the smart city

Although smart cities are now the subject of a growing literature, there is a paucity of research which considers how smart city projects develop on the ground. This paper begins to address this concern by exploring the development of a transport application, MotionMap, within the MK:Smart smart city programme. MotionMap aims to provide city-wide real-time transport information services. It is being developed through an ongoing dialogue sparked by the interaction of lead users and prototypes of a smart transport app. We draw on insights from Strategic Niche Management and social practice theories to explore how ‘smart’ might be integrated within and potentially transform the plurality of mobility practices that exist in cities.     

Analysis of essential patent portfolios via bibliometric mapping: an illustration of leading firms in the 4G era

This study aims to analyse the essential patent portfolios of individual firms via bibliometric mapping. Based on the maps drawn via this method, important clusters of each company are analysed and two interpretations are made. As an illustration, the mobile phone industry is selected because standardisation is highly important for firms in this industry. Among others, long-term evolution (LTE) of the 4G era is chosen as a standard and Qualcomm, Nokia, Ericsson, and NTT DOCOMO are included as leading firms. As a result, firm-wise LTE essential patent portfolios were visualised. Based on the information given in these maps, two important clusters (i.e. the clusters composed of frequently emerging words and their periphery and the clusters including particularly noticeable terms) were analysed. In addition, two interpretations were made as follows. First, specialised and expandable technological clusters for each company (14 specialised/expandable clusters for Qualcomm, 8 for Nokia, 11 for Ericsson, and 10 for NTT DOCOMO) were identified. Second, appropriate cooperative strategies were devised according to the ownership patterns of technologies as follows. To begin with, if the technologies were owned by one company (e.g. multi-carriers, duplex channel, error correction), a non-cooperative strategy, such as non-exclusive licensing, was advised. Next, when the technology was owned by two companies (i.e. OFDM (orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing)), a cooperative strategy, such as cross-licensing, was recommended. Finally, if the technologies were owned by multiple companies (i.e. MIMO (multi-input and multi-output) and data transmission), then a cooperative strategy, such as a patent pool, was proposed.     

Market orientation and performance in the biotechnology industry: An exploratory empirical analysis

The purpose ofthis study was to conduct an exploratory investigation into the link between market orientation and business performance in the biotechnology sector. Based on the nature and character of the biotechnology industry, a multi-faceted scale of market orientation was derived from a preuiously tested and refined measure of the construct. Data were generated from 62 biotechnolog firms and a variety of market orientation-performance relationships were investigated, alongside other potential effects on the different dimensions of business performance. The findings indicate that market orientation is positively and signficanttly associated with three of the four performance measures examined. Implications of our findings for biotechnology industry managers are discussed and limitations of the study as well as future research directions are addressed.     

Revisiting the Porter hypothesis: an empirical analysis of Green innovation for the Netherlands

ABSTRACT

Almost all empirical research that has attempted to assess the validity of the Porter hypothesis (PH) has started from reduced-form models, for example, single-equation models for estimating the contribution of environmental regulation to productivity. This paper follows a structural approach that allows testing what is known in the literature as the ‘weak’ and the ‘strong’ version of the PH. Our ‘Green Innovation’ model includes three types of eco-investments to explain differences in the incidence of two types of eco-innovation, which are allowed to affect labor productivity. We allow for complementarity between the two types of eco-innovations. Using a comprehensive panel of Dutch manufacturing firm-level data we estimate the relative importance of environmental regulations on eco-investment and eco-innovations. The results of our analysis show a strong corroboration of the weak and a nuanced corroboration of the strong version of the PH.     

Collaboration and innovation: An empirical study of Indian technological enterprises

In 2010, the Indian government declared 2010–2020 to be the ‘Decade of Innovation’ and established the State Innovation Councils and Sectoral Innovation Councils to encourage and facilitate innovation by technological firms. In this paper, we study the relationship between collaboration and innovation in a cross‐section of Indian firms, paying particular attention to the impact of the innovation councils. Our results suggest that domestic collaborations have an important impact on firm innovation, as do the innovation councils, but that the impact of the councils is less for firms that collaborate.