1,721,170 research outputs found
Economic and management perspectives on the value of patents
No full textThis chapter will fi rst clarify the defi nition of patent value adopted in the
economic literature. Then, it will illustrate the diff erent approaches adopted
to infer patent value (through patent renewal data, actual commercial
transactions, inventors’ surveys, stock market valuation of publicly- listed
corporations, and venture capitalists’ valuations of start- up companies)
and summarize the main results obtained, with particular reference to the
widely- observed heterogeneity in the value of patents. It will then focus on
the diff erent value determinants (that is, at the level of patent/technology,
inventor, organisation, localisation, and so on) which have been associated
by empirical studies with patent value. Finally, it will conclude by discussing
the opportunities for future research on the topic
Corporate governance and innovation
No full textThis chapter reviews the theoretical contributions and the empirical studies linking corporate governance structures and innovation. Both concepts have attracted the attention of a vast community of scholars coming from different disciplinary perspectives. It is therefore important to clearly assess at the beginning of this chapter the boundaries of discussion with respect to the assumptions made on both elements.
Corporate governance refers to the set of internal and external control mechanisms that reduce the conflicts of interest between managers and shareholders deriving from the separation of ownership and control (Berle and Means, 1968; Fama and Jensen, 1983; Baysinger and Hoskisson, 1990; Shleifer and Vishny, 1987). A possible approach to the corporate governance problem emphasizes the role of external institutions and organizations in alleviating the agency costs arising from the specialization of management and finance, as in the case of the legal protection given to investors from the risks of expropriation by managers (Shleifer and Vishiny, 1987). However, in this chapter we will explicitly focus on the core internal relationships between managers and shareholders and refer to some critical characteristics in a company’s governance system, such as large individual shareholders, institutional investors, the role of the Government within state enterprises, and the board of directors. Moreover, we will emphasize the implications of the theoretical arguments discussed not only for the relationship between managers and shareholders, but also, within management, between decision makers and executors.
We interpret innovation activities as a set of interwoven processes starting with the generation of new knowledge targeted to the discovery of new product and processes, and ending with their commercial exploitation. These processes are multiple, overlapping and performed by a multitude of different actors inside and outside companies, with a distribution of actions and decision making at different organizational levels often difficult to observe and monitor. As a consequence, innovation activities are related both to higher level structural organizational arrangements, and to lower level micro behavioral attainments.
The different dimensions of corporate governance structures and instruments cross all these levels, as we will see all along this chapter, create a set of conditions which can profoundly affect the nature and the direction of innovative activities. Economic approaches rooted in Transaction Cost Theory and in Agency Theory rely on the high level of uncertainty characterizing innovation activities, the presence of asymmetric information between the researchers and the decision makers, and the high level of asset specificity generated by dedicated R&D investments, to link governance structures and innovation.
The increasing strategic importance of innovation and the concurrent widespread diffusion of several reforms in the international capital markets and in the regulatory frameworks of all major industrialized countries require a deeper analysis of the empirical consistency of these theoretical predictions. Such analysis should also discriminate among the different aspects of innovation activities, as well as the different elements of corporate governance structuring decisions.
Starting from a threefold distinction of the latter, in the following paragraphs we analyze to what extent the tension between ownership and control, the role and characteristics of the shareholders, and the role and the characteristics of the board influence the decision to invest in innovation. Building on the most recent results presented by research in economics, strategy and organization theory we offer to the reader a systematic rationalization of usually disperse evidence and introduce formally the research questions which will be further elaborated in Chapters 2 and 3, and investigated empirically in the following chapters
The intersection between capacity building and finance in M. Granieri, A. Basso Capacity Building in Technology Transfer – The European Experience
No full textNew ventures do not have access to the same financial resources as larger firms, for the presence of the so-called “funding gap”. Such a barrier can be particularly pronounced for university startups, given their knowledge- and technology-based nature. To address this market failure, universities (often in collaboration with public and/or private partners) have started to activate programs to support their startups. By presenting a set of best practices and case studies, the chapter describes three main areas of intervention in the area of capacity building for accessing finance: (i) raising awareness and competences to access external finance (i.e. training activities and commercialization boot- camps), (ii) supporting the validation and maturation of university technologies (i.e. proof-of-concept programmes and university accelerator programmes) and (iii) enhancing interactions and building partnership with investors (i.e. matchmaking events with investors, networks of different types of investors, formalized partnerships between universities and financial investors, and university seed funds)
Privatization’s effects on r & d investments
No full textIn this chapter, we theoretically model the impact of the State as a sole or principal shareholder on the firm’s commitment to invest in R&D activities and to protect the results of the innovation process. Drawing on the theoretical arguments introduced in Chapter 1 as to the objectives of principal, the management incentive system and the amount of information available to principals and agents, we hypothesize that privatization processes negatively affect firm-level R&D investments, and positively affect appropriability concerns and patent productivity.
To test our hypotheses, we analyze a panel-data set of 35 companies, operating in 11 different industries, fully or partially privatized through public offering in 9 European countries during the period 1980-1997. First, we compare pre- and post- privatization R&D efforts and patent quantity and quality. We then explore possible differences emerging between the privatization announcement and its actual implementation, relatively to trends in the precedent and in the following periods. We argue that, over this time-window, a significant restructuring can affect the allocation of resources to R&D activities and their organization, given the priority to maximize the value of the company to increase the financial returns for the Government from the public offer. Finally, we use a fixed effects regression model to control for alternative explanations (e.g. industry effects, scale effects) in assessing R&D and patent behavior of firms facing privatization.
The results support our hypotheses, showing a significant reduction of R&D intensity at the firm level, controlling for industry and time effects. Differences emerge with regard to the amount of shares being transferred, to the level of technological opportunities and to the degree of liberalization of the industry. At the same time, our findings document an increase in patenting by privatized companies. Moreover, using citations to measure patents quality, we find that the rise in patenting activity following privatization is not accompanied by a decline in the quality of the awards, which remains constant or even increases in some cases. These two results combined suggest an improvement in terms of R&D productivity of privatised firms. We conclude by discussing the implications of these results for future research and for public policy decisions to proactively address possible under investment risks in R&D accompanying privatization process
State vs. Private Ownership and Innovation Performance. An Empirical Analysis Based on Tobin’s q
No full textThe impact of public funding on science valorisation: an analysis of the ERC Proof-of-Concept Programme
Full text linkGovernments and public agencies are increasingly keen to support the translation of scientific discoveries into commercial and societal applications through science valorisation funding, as a way to enhance progress and inclusive growth. In this paper, we use grant-level data from the European Research Council Proof-of-Concept (PoC) programme, in order to assess the impact of public funding on a broad set of science valorisation outcomes, including licensing, spinoff formation, R&D collaborations, consulting and access to follow-on funding. We employ an instrumental variable approach to compare the valorisation outcomes of projects that obtained an ERC PoC grant to a group of projects that applied to the PoC scheme but were not funded. We find that the programme was effective in fostering the early valorisation of scientific discoveries by all measures of success that we employed. Overall, thus, our findings speak in favour of this type of policy instrument as a catalyst to accelerate the transition of scientific breakthroughs towards practical applications
Blockchain and smart contracts in shipping and transport. A legal revolution is about to arrive?
No full textAbstract: L’articolo si sofferma sulla tecnologia blockchain e sulla sua applicazione nel settore marittimo e dei trasporti, specie in congiunzione coi cd. smart contracts, i.e. contratti eseguiti mediante algoritmi. Descrive i motivi per cui, nella logistica, le applicazioni della blockchain si sono rapidamente sviluppate, e quale possibile evoluzione potrebbe determinare la diffusione di queste tecnologie, sia nei rapporti del commercio internazionale, sia nella cooperazione interstatuale sulla navigazione. Viene messo in luce come, significativamente, la blockchain abbia elementi in comune con istituti storici del diritto marittimo, che potrebbero facilitarne la diffusione, visto che anch’essa soddisfa quelle stesse esigenze economiche di certezza dei rapporti giuridici che furono alla base, ad esempio, dell’invenzione della polizza di carico. Infine, l’articolo si sofferma sulla collocazione di queste tecnologie nel mondo giuridico, e sulla necessità di inquadrarle all’interno di istituti giuridici preferibilmente di diritto uniforme, pena il rischio di una sottrazione totale di questi fenomeni al controllo della legge. In tal senso, soltanto le cd. Rotterdam Rules sembrano poter coprire nel loro ambito di operatività questi fenomeni, ed è bene quindi che gli Stati si attivino per guidare la diffusione di questi fenomeni, riportandoli nell’alveo di situazioni tipiche nelle quali l’autonomia privata si estrinseca nel commercio internazionale, nell’ambito tuttavia di un quadro sovranazionale di regole condiviso ed efficace
Privatization and Economic returns to R&D Investments
No full textThis article analyzes the impact of privatization on firms’ expected R & D economic performance. We examine the effect of R & D
Investments on market value for a panel of privatized firms in Western Europe matched with different samples of privately owned
firms. The results show that the effect is systematically higher for privately owned firms as compared to privatized firms.
Moreover, the market valuation of R & D investments increases over time for privatized firms. This evidence is consistent
With the hypothesis that organizational inertia defers the impact of privatization on firm’s R&D performance
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