So long as the entry and exit of firms using the generic technology sets the price in an industry, one or more price-taking firms can coexist with proprietary technologies yielding more or less substantial quasi-rents to the sunk development costs. Consumer welfare is increased if an innovator...

Research on the nanoscale has revolutionized areas of science and has begun to have an impact on, and be impacted by, society and economy. We are capturing early traces of these processes in NanoBank, a large scale, multi-year project to provide a public data resource which will link individuals...

Metamorphic progress (productivity growth much faster than average) is often driven by Grilichesian inventions of methods of inventing. For hybrid seed corn, the enabling invention was double-cross hybridization yielding highly productive seed corn that was not self-propagating. Biotechnology...

This paper examines the value of collecting archival data to evaluate the Advanced Technology Program's (ATP) impact on participants' short- and long-term business success. We use two types of indicators of business success: patenting activity which can be tracked for all participants, and...

Scientist-entrepreneurs prominent in biotech and other high-technology industries view going public not as a cost-effective source of capital but as a cross between selling a now-proven innovation and winning a lottery. Unlike most empirical IPO analyses confined to those firms that go public,...

Most firms achieve perfective progress, incrementally improving commodities or productivity. But technological progress is concentrated in a few firms achieving metamorphic progress: forming or transforming industries with technological breakthroughs (e.g., biotechnology, lasers, semiconductors,...

Research on intellectual property has focused on formal legally recorded rights that we call deeded, most often measured by granted patents. Meanwhile, other "defacto" IP (mainly purposive secrecy and natural excludability) has become more important because of the increasing closeness of...

Data availability is arguably the greatest impediment to advancing the science of science and innovation policy and practice (SciSIPP). This paper describes the contents, methodology and use of the public online COMETS (Connecting Outcome Measures in Entrepreneurship Technology and Science)...