Complex and important policy decisions are often made with advice from a committee of experts, where experts first convene and discuss, before finalizing their collective decision with a vote. We show that the voting structure (whether the experts vote sequentially or simultaneously) plays a...

A new design can be compared with its contemporaries or older designs. In this study, we argue that the temporal distance between the new design and its comparison play an important role in understanding how a new design’s similarity with other designs contributes to its valuation. Construing...

Problem Definition. In what kind of business method innovation do firms in the manufacturing and trade sectors engage? Does engagement in business method innovation create value for these firms? The present paper provides answers to these questions with empirical evidence.Methodology/Results....

We examine how the strengthened legal protection of novel designs prevents mimicking behaviors and thus enhances the economic value of novel designs and their assignees. Using an unexpected decision of the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, we show that more intricate designs (which were more...

This paper introduces an approach to identify styles in product designs. We first built a theoretical foundation on what a style is and how designs are configured into styles. On this basis we executed a graph-clustering algorithm to identify styles in a population of design patents filed in the...