Appropriability,preemption, and firm performance

The impact of strategies used to appropriate innovation rents on firm performance is analyzed using a sample of U.S. public manufacturing firms. Stronger appropriability at the firm level, achieved through patent protection or the ownership of specialized complementary assets, leads to superior economic performance, as measured by the stock market valuation of a firm's R& D assets. Among commonly used ‘nonconventional’ patent strategies, preemptive patenting allows incumbents to strengthen their market power. Consistent with theory, such effect is higher for incumbents with higher ex ante market power and facing a higher threat of entry, and lower when R& D competition is characterized by the discovery of drastic innovations. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

PARALLEL TRADE,INTERNATIONAL EXHAUSTION AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS: A WELFARE ANALYSIS*

This paper analyses the issue of parallel trade (arbitrage) for products protected by intellectual property rights. We discuss a basic trade‐off that arises between the ex post better allocation that typically occurs under parallel trade when demand dispersion is not too high, and the ex ante reduced product quality because of lower investment. We show that the size of the welfare effects is significantly affected by the presence of a ‘generic’ product, which represents a form of competition for the monopolist. The monopolist will introduce a ‘fighting brand’ to compete with the generic, which dilutes but does not eliminate the result on the adverse effects of parallel trade on investments.     

Declared essential patents and average total R&D expenditures per patent family

The sharp increase in SEP declarations and declaring firms emphasizes the necessity for understanding firms’ innovation investment behavior in standardization. This paper empirically investigates whether declared standard-essential patents (SEPs) and the declaring firm’s business model (operationalized as a firm’s location in the value chain) are associated with a firm’s innovation investment behavior. To this end, we measure firms’ innovation investment behavior through average total research and development (R&D) expenditures per filed patent family for publicly listed firms from 1999 to 2018. Our sample mainly includes major SEP family declarants. We rely on a binary business model taxonomy differentiating upstream and downstream firms. Within that setting, total R&D expenditures rise with increasing fragmentation of declared SEP families, suggesting that firms adjust their R&D investments to declaration developments in standard-setting organizations (SSOs). We also show that upstream firms have significantly lower total R&D expenditures than downstream firms, which could indicate structural differences in their intellectual property (IP) and R&D management processes. Our results can help SSOs and regulators better understand firms’ innovation investment behavior.     

CREDIBLE RETALIATORY ENTRY AND STRATEGIC TOE‐HOLDS*

The anticipated profits from entry by an established firm into a new market will depend on how incumbents in that market are expected to respond. One possibility, suggested by cases and the literature, is that an incumbent may respond with ‘retaliatory entry’ into the first entrant's ‘home’ market. The model presented here describes conditions under which this can be a credible threat that deters the first entry. When the conditions are such that it is not credible, the paper shows how firms can provide credibility through the establishment of toe‐hold investments in other markets.     

自主创新的品牌经济学研究

科技开发不是自主创新的目的，而是创建品牌的手段。只有创建新的品类级品牌，我国才能在过剩的市场竞争中摆脱价格竞争，进入良性循环。为此，本文对品牌的经济学属性进行了理论分析，认为在价格一定的情况下，通过提高品牌品类度，采取精确的品牌策略，厂商不仅可以获得盈利的短期均衡，而且可以获得持久的长期均衡。而要提高品类度，关键是采取与对手品牌所在品类相反的分异方向，这就需要在自主创新战略中．实施以品牌品类创新为导向的品牌工程．     

Innovating the innovation process: an organisational experiment in global pharma pursuing radical innovation

The challenge of managing the fuzzy front end of the innovation process is particularly acute for large, multi‐brand, research and development (R&D)‐intensive firms. Poor performance at generating radical innovations has resulted in many large organisations seeking to innovate how they organise for innovation. This paper presents an inductive, longitudinal study of an organisational experiment that sought to get ‘game‐changing, radical ideas’ into the new product development funnel of a top three pharma. The immediate outcomes of a team‐based internal innovation tournament included 33 new product ideas, 14 of which were radical. The medium term outcome of the experiment was a reorganisation of how the firm now pursues radical innovation activities. We link these outcomes to team leadership, contrasting innovation processes, including decisions about how to incorporate the ‘voice of the consumer’. The inductive, longitudinal study suggests causal interconnections between innovation team leadership, innovation team processes, and innovation outcomes.     

The Effect of Family Involvement on Innovation Outcomes: The Moderating Role of Board Social Capital

Innovation is an essential and yet puzzling part of family firms’ strategic focus. While family firms are generally characterized as conservative regarding their research and development (R&D) activities, researchers have recently argued that family firms can still achieve innovation-based competitive advantages. Seeking to understand the link between family influence and the outcomes of innovation, we suggest that it is necessary not only to observe the depth of family involvement, but also to differentiate between technological inventions and market innovations. We further posit that the board members’ social capital constitutes an important contingency for this link. We, therefore, investigate the relationship between family involvement and two different outcomes: the number of the firm’s inventions and the market relevance of innovations. Our analysis of S&P 500 firms comprises 1.85 million patents and manual evaluations of 1774 product announcements. The results of our estimations suggest that family involvement is negatively related to the number of inventions and positively related to the market relevance of innovations. They further show that internal and external board social capital moderate the relationship between family involvement and the number of inventions. This study adds to the discussion about family firm innovation by using socioemotional wealth to explain heterogeneity in innovation patterns and revealing that relational resources derived from board social capital are crucial boundary conditions for families’ influence on technological inventions. Taken together, it works toward a more holistic view of innovation in family-influenced firms.     

The impact of competitive advantage on the investment timing in Stackelberg leader–follower game

This short note clarifies how the Stackelberg leader’s competitive advantage after the follower’s entry affects the leader’s optimal market entry decision and Stackelberg strategic interactions under uncertainty. Although the Stackelberg leader’s first investment threshold remains constant and coincides with the monopolist’s investment trigger, his second (third) investment threshold, which defines the exit (entry) of the first (second) investment interval, increases with an increased competitive advantage. With an increased competitive advantage, the probability of sequential investment equilibrium (simultaneous investment equilibrium) increases (decreases) irrespective of the level of volatility. Moreover, for a given level of competitive advantage, an increase in the volatility tends to decrease (increase) the probability of simultaneous investment equilibrium (sequential investment equilibrium). For a richer set of results, endogenous firm roles are examined and analyzed as well. The leader’s preemptive threshold is negatively affected by his competitive advantage.     

How to leverage the impact of R&D on product innovation? The moderating effect of management innovation

Although research and development (R&D) is a key indicator of (technological) innovation, scholars have found mixed results regarding its effect on product innovation and firm performance. In this paper, we claim that variations in R&D effectiveness can be explained by changes in a firm’s social system, in particular in its management innovation. It is still unclear how management innovation influences R&D effectiveness in terms of product innovation. In this study, we address this theoretical and empirical gap in the innovation literature. Our theoretical arguments and findings from a large-scale survey among Dutch firms show that R&D has a decreasingly positive relationship with product innovation, particularly for firms with low levels of management innovation. However, in firms with high levels of management innovation, this relationship becomes more J-shaped, especially in small and medium-sized firms. Our findings also appear to indicate that management innovation may be more important for competitive advantage than just R&D. Overall, our insights reveal that management innovation is a key moderator in explaining firms’ effectiveness in transforming R&D into successful product innovation.     

Endogenous Network Formation in Patent Contests And Its Role as A Barrier to Entry

In a setting of R&D competition, we study how collaboration affects strategic decisions during a patent contest, and how the latter influences the collaboration network structures the firms can form. We use an all pay auction approach to endogenize both network formation and R&D intensities, and to take heterogeneous and private valuations for patents into account. We find that the complete network is not always the only pairwise stable one. The other stable networks have the realistic property that some firms drop out of the contest. Thus, ‘weak’ cooperation can serve as a barrier to entry on the market for innovation.     

When the Former CEO Stays on Board: The Role of the Predecessor’s Board Retention for Product Innovation in Family Firms

Understanding product innovation in family firms is an important research endeavor given the economic predominance of those firms, their idiosyncrasies, and the importance of constant renewal for those firms to achieve transgenerational survival. Recently, family firm research has highlighted the role of next-generation chief executive officers (CEOs; i.e., successors) who are often seen as drivers for innovating a family firm’s products. However, prior research has typically neglected that predecessors, who are often portrayed as less willing to introduce product innovation, frequently remain involved postsuccession through occupying board positions and thus still substantially influence the decision-making processes and outcomes of family firms, such as product innovation. As a result, our understanding of the role of predecessors and their postsuccession involvement in family firms’ product innovation remains unclear. Building on stakeholder salience theory and on insights from the literature on innovation and succession in family firms, we develop hypotheses about how and under which conditions the predecessor’s board retention affects product innovation in family firms after succession. Building on more than 200 family firm CEO succession cases in small- and medium-sized, privately owned family firms, our results reveal that the predecessor’s board retention negatively affects product innovation. This negative effect is strengthened with increasing involvement of the predecessor in the successor selection process, and it is offset in the case of family succession. Our findings contribute to the emerging stream of research on family firm succession and product innovation and provide important implications for practice.     

Vertical Exclusion with Downstream Risk Aversion or Limited Liability

An upstream firm with full commitment bilaterally contracts with two ex ante identical downstream firms. Each observes its own cost shock, and faces uncertainty from its competitor’s shock. When they are risk neutral and can absorb losses, the upstream firm contracts symmetric outputs for production efficiency. However, when they are risk averse, competition requires the payment of a risk premium due to revenue uncertainty. Moreover, when they enjoy limited liability, competition requires the upstream firm to share additional surplus. To resolve these trade‐offs, the upstream firm offers exclusive contracts in many cases.     

Does importer involvement contribute to product innovation? The role of export market factors and intra-firm coordination

Relying on insights from resource dependence and information processing theory, this study analyzes the extent to which an importer's involvement influences product innovation at the industrial exporter firm. We consider two modes of involvement, collecting importer's feedback and importer integration in the product development effort. We propose that the relationship between importer involvement and product innovation is contingent upon the level of inter-functional coordination within the development firm, and contextual factors related to the export market. Data were collected from export companies participating in different international business-to-business markets. Results show that firms with high inter-functional coordination achieved higher leverage from importer feedback, but obtain no impact from importer integration in product development (PD). Contextual factors affect the relationship between importer involvement and product innovation: importer feedback affects product innovation in environments with intense competition and low technological turbulence. Importer integration in PD has a significant effect on product innovation in environments with low competitive intensity and high technological turbulence. This study contributes to a better understanding of the conditions that allow an exporter firm to create value through external relationships. Theoretical and managerial implications of these findings are discussed.     

Does data portability facilitate entry?

Data portability rules are generally thought to encourage consumers to switch between different service providers and facilitate entry of new firms. Some of these rules, however, only apply to data “provided by” the consumer (data subject), e.g., purchasing patterns. Data “derived by” a firm (data controller) with the help of data analytics, e.g., recommendations derived from purchasing patterns, does not fall under data portability rules. We show that, under the current legislation along with extensive use of data analytics, data portability may hinder switching and entry due to the demand-expansion effect: the prospect of easier switching due to data portability may entice consumers to provide even more data to the incumbent, which strengthens the incumbency advantage. Hence, the effectiveness of data portability in fostering competition will depend on what types of data are portable. More generally, in analysing the effectiveness of polices aiming at reducing ex post switching costs, it is important to take into account their impacts on ex ante actions that build up endogenous entry barrier.     

The impact of earnings pressure on exploratory innovation

While earnings expectation has been shown to determine a firm’s investment decisions, the knowledge about how such expectation influences a firm’s investment horizon for innovation is still blurred. This study therefore addresses this research issue by examining the relationship between earnings pressure and exploratory innovation while investigating the moderating effects of cross‐rival effect and resource availability. By examining high‐tech industrial firms in S&P 1500 from 2000 to 2012, the results indicate that stock analysts, as information intermediaries between innovation firms and the capital market, impose pressure through earnings forecasts on firms’ exploratory innovation. Our findings also reveal that the earnings pressure‐exploratory innovation relationship can be mitigated when its competitors encounter a higher level of earnings pressure. However, a firm’s financial slack shows less significant association to moderate the earnings pressure‐exploratory innovation relationship. Possible explanations for the results in regard to their theoretical and practical implications are discussed in this study.     

Switching costs in the US seed industry: Technology adoption and welfare impacts

We evaluate the role of brand and technology switching costs in the US soybean seed industry using a unique dataset of actual seed purchases by about 28,000 farmers from 1996 to 2016. Using a random coefficients logit model of demand, we estimate brand and technology switching costs, characterize the distributions of buyers’ willingness to pay for seed brands and the glyphosate tolerance (GT) trait, and assess the implications of brand and technology switching costs for farmers’ welfare, technology adoption, firm profits, and firm market shares. We find that farmers are willing to pay large premiums for brand labels, and even larger premiums for the GT trait, although there is considerable heterogeneity in these values. Switching costs play an important role in the soybean seed industry. Eliminating these costs would significantly increase buyers’ welfare, reduce seed prices and firm profits, decrease adoption of the GT trait, and impact industry consolidation by expanding smaller firms’ market shares.     

Market size and competition: A “hump-shaped” result

An active empirical literature estimates entry threshold ratios (ETRs), introduced by Bresnahan and Reiss (1991), to learn about the impact of firm entry on competition. We show that in the standard homogeneous goods oligopoly model, there is no monotonic relationship with the price-cost margin, one measure for the strength of competition. Regardless of the shape of demand, the ETR is hump-shaped in the number of active firms. It can also increase with entry in the Salop model of product differentiation or in a game of repeated interactions where collusion is possible. Empirical applications should use caution and only interpret changes in the ratio as indicative of a change in competition when the number of firms is sufficiently large.     

INNOVATION IN VERTICALLY RELATED MARKETS*

We examine the impact of vertical industry structure on upstream process innovation. We find that vertical integration (VI) generally enhances innovation under downstream Cournot competition, but can diminish innovation under downstream Bertrand competition. We also find that under Bertrand competition, VI can increase innovation when the direct incentives for innovation are limited, but can reduce innovation when the direct incentives are pronounced.     

Customer,regulatory, and competitive pressure as drivers of environmental innovation

We develop an economic analysis in order to examine the effects of consumer, regulatory, and competitive pressure on firm investments in environmentally friendly production. Specifically, we ask: Why do firms vary in their levels of environmental innovation? Under what conditions are such pressures effective in bringing about environmental innovation? We first consider a monopolist who faces the twin pressures of reduced customer demand and regulatory penalties, as a result of its emissions. In response to these pressures, the firm has the opportunity to make a costly investment in reduction of emissions. Secondly, we consider a competitive scenario in which two firms compete for environmentally sensitive customers. Solving our model, we find that pressure has the intended effect as long as the firm's initial level of emissions is below a certain threshold. If the emissions are above this threshold, we find that pressure might have an adverse effect on the firm's environmental investment, and that subsidies that support environmental innovation can be a better alternative. We also show that competition over environmentally sensitive customers can improve the effectiveness of environmental pressures.