The market for ideas makes new combinations of inventions to form complex innovations such smart phones and mobile broadband networks. I show that bargaining in the market for ideas provides efficient coordination with complementary inventions. Extending neoclassical economic tools to the market...

One of the most striking and undertheorized aspects of fields that commercialize patented technologies is the dynamic interplay of structural forces pushing toward consolidation. Of course, technological industries are complex ecosystems featuring numerous players of different sizes along the...

Airplanes were invented by hobbyists and experimenters, and some personal computers were as well. Similarly, many open-source software developers are interested in the software they make, and not focused on profit. Based on these cases, this paper has a model of agents called tinkerers who want...

R&D collaboration facilitates pooling of complementary skills, learning from the partner as well as sharing risks and costs. Research therefore repeatedly stressed the positive relationship between collaborative R&D and innovation performance. Collaboration, however, involves transaction costs...

This article compares the relationship between patent quality and patent value in discrete and cumulative innovation. Using factor analysis and a set of various commonly used patent quality indicators including claims, citations and family size, we build a quality factor jointly driving all...

Few studies on open innovation (OI) have addressed OI practices in small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and how their use of OI and resulting benefits differ from large enterprises. The lack of resources in SMEs to engage in looking outward is said to be a barrier to OI, but at the same...

In this article, we provide first insights on how open innovation is connected to the imitation of intellectual property (IP). Analyzing survey data concerning the open innovation orientation along the innovation value chain of 3956 German firms, we show that companies engaged in open innovation...

While intellectual property has long been perceived as a method for protecting, and ultimately valuing, innovation, it is an imperfect measure. With its traditional bias in favor of innovation as delimited by Western views of individuality and technological progress, intellectual property is not...

We examine the effect of directors with extended tenure on corporate innovation. Using a sample of U.S. firms from 2001-2006, we find that firms with a higher portion of directors with extended tenure are associated with significantly lower innovation productivity and quality, as manifested in a...

Transaction costs and contracting problems associated with proliferation of patents may have a negative impact on innovation. We present novel data on the frequency with which innovative German firms encounter problems with access to intellectual property (IP) for innovation. While only a small...