Why do so many high-priced acquisitions of entrepreneurial firms take place in network industries? We develop a theory of commercialization (entry or sale) in network industries showing that high equilibrium acquisition prices are driven by the incumbents' desire to prevent rivals from acquiring...

In this paper, we study entrepreneurial innovations in an industry characterized by network effects. We show that the presence of network externalities tends to make the entrepreneur prefer sale to entry. Moreover, we also show that the incentive to innovate for entry decreases when network...