Capturing Value from Innovation - papers
Lecture 1 - James et al. (2013): How firms Capture Value From Their Innovations 1
Lecture 1 - Sofka et al. (2018): Protecting knowledge: How legal requirements to reveal
information affect the importance of secrecy 7
Lecture 1 - Schilling (2010) Chapter 9: Protecting innovation 10
Lecture 2 - Ceccagnoli (2009): Appropriability, preemption, firm performance 13
Lecture 2 - Teece (1986): Profiting from technological innovation: Implications for
integration, collaboration, licensing and public policy 16
Lecture 2 - Teece (2010): Business models, business strategy and innovation 24
Lecture 3 - van Alstyne et al. (2016): Pipelines, Platforms, and the New Rules of Strategy
29
Lecture 3 - Rietveld & Schilling (2021): Platform Competition: A Systematic and
Interdisciplinary Review of the Literature 31
Lecture 3 - Rietveld et al. (2019): Platform strategy: Managing ecosystem value through
selective promotion of complements 36
Lecture 4 - Broekhuizen et al. (2013): New horizons or a strategic mirage?
Artist-led-distribution versus alliance strategy in the video game industry 40
Lecture 4 - Gemser et al. (2008): Why Some Awards Are More Effective Signals of Quality
Than Others: A Study of Movie Awards 42
Lecture 4 - Hofmann et al. (2016): Empirical generalizations on the impact of stars on the
economic success of movies 45
Lecture 5 - Chesbrough (2006): Open innovation: a new paradigm for understanding
industrial innovation 47
Lecture 5 - Laursen & Salter (2006): Open for innovation: the role of openness in
explaining innovation performance among UK manufacturing firms 49
Lecture 5 - Arora et al. (2016): The paradox of openness revisited: collaborative
innovation and patenting by UK innovators 53
, CVFI papers
Lecture 1 - James et al. (2013): How firms Capture Value From Their
Innovations
Four primary mechanisms (patents, secrecy, lead time, complementary assets) can influence
whether and to which extent firms capture value generated by innovations. The characteristics
of institutions, industries, firms, and individual technologies will affect the selection of particular
value capture mechanisms. This paper helps to understand the conditions under which specific
bundles of value capture mechanisms are most likely to help innovating rims achieve persistent
superior performance.
Limitations of prior research are related to
- Main focus on patents (vs secrecy) not on other mechanism or combinations of
mechanisms
- Characteristics of institutions, industries, firms and individual technologies have been
ignored
- There is no theory to compare when which mechanisms would be most effective to
capture value
Literature review
The literature is about divided into the following areas:
Patents refer to legally granted rights to exclude others from making, signing, selling, importing
an invention, for a limited time, within a given country.
1
, CVFI papers
Secrecy refers to a firm's efforts to protect uniqueness of innovation by withholding technical
details from the public.
Lead time refers to early timing of developing and introducing an innovation
Complementary assets refer to supplementary assets such as manufacturing, distributing,
marketing, or service that are used with the focal innovation.
These 4 mechanisms lead to 16 possible combinations as strategies to capture value.
Identifying and defining contextual conditions
From literature we see 4 contextual conditions
1. Institutional factors such as IP laws
2. Industry characteristics including uncertainty, product differentiation
3. Firm attributes such as focus of R&D, technological capabilities
4. Technology-level characteristics such as complexity and tacitness of knowledge
These four also result in 16 combinations of factors that may affect the selection of the value
capture strategies.
Identifying and defining performance outcomes
Outcome measures in this paper are
- Competitive advantage
- Profits
- Economic performance
Associating contextual conditions and value capture strategy
Patents
Patent mechanism is costly to enforce and create and does not guarantee profits from the
innovation.
The legal protection is often lower and less effective than promised in theory.
The value of patents varies across contexts. Theory should research under which conditions
patenting will provide an effective way to maximize value captured from innovations.
The strength of legal protection is an institutional condition that has often been linked to it.
This varies across product and geographic contexts. Strength of IP regime affects costs of
preventing imitation in two ways:
1. Low penalties lead to more infringements which raises the cost of patent breaches
2. More infringements increase costs as the firms has to claim several rivals.
🡪 firms are less likely to use patents when countries have weak IP regulations or when
enforcement is weak.
An industry-level condition that affects patenting is degree of competitive intensity, number
of competitors, legal enforceability.
Firm-specific condition that affects patenting is scale and scope of R&D, and the ability to
manage IP, and firm size.
Technology specific condition that affects patenting is the nature of technological
knowledge. More complex innovations (communications) have more patentable elements
whereas less complex innovation (pharmaceuticals) have less and are owned by few firms.
Firms in less complex innovation areas can make stronger claims of novelty as they are the only
2
, CVFI papers
ones that own it, therefore they are more likely to win in patent litigations and are more likely to
choose patents.
Secrecy
Secrecy as a value capture mechanism involves internal procedures to restrict the flow of
information within and outside the organization. This increases costs of imitation for rivals, but it
also increases costs for the focal firm as it increases high monitoring costs and leads to lower
employee creativity. The restriction of information flows internally can harm innovation and
creativity. The paradox of disclosure suggests that firms must disclose part of their innovation
to signal its value, but they need to protect it from appropriation.
- In weak IP protection institutional environments firms tend to use secrecy.
- Industry-characteristics such as rivalry and size of competitors also affects use of
secrecy. More intensive competition increases cost of maintaining secrecy.
- Firm-specific characteristic such as efforts to compartmentalize knowledge, suggest
that more secrecy causes lower levels of learning and innovation.
- Technology-specific characteristics indicate that less complex innovations are more
costly to protect via secrecy as they can be imitated more easily. Product innovation is
harder to protect with secrecy compared to process innovation because it can be
observed easily.
Lead time advantages
Can result in competitive advantages but flexibility disadvantages.
- Not much literature on institutional environment characteristics that influence
first-mover advantages of this protection mechanism
- Industry characteristics look at horizontal differentiation (different products) versus
vertical differentiation (quality differences). lead time advantages are contingent on the
stage of industry evolution, ample opportunities exist for research associating other
industry attributes with the selection of a lead time value capture strategy (??)
- Firm-specific characteristics as the degree of technological leadership and switching
costs affect ability to capture value through lead time. Higher absorptive capacity
increases potential to realize first-mover advantages and reduces spillovers.
- Technological characteristics such as codifiability, complexity, observability influence
lead time advantages because more codifiability leads to more rapid transfer to
second-movers.
Complementary assets
When commercializing an innovation requires specialized assets that cannot be accessed in the
factor market, developing those assets internally helps firms to capture value.
- In institutional environments with weak appropriability regimes, complementary assets
can be valuable to capture value.
- With industry differences there are specific complementary assets per industry
- With firms-specific characteristics the imitability is lower. Specialized complementary
assets have more effect compared to generic complementary assets
- Firms that own the complementary assets of a radical technological change are likely
to have a competitive advantage
Patents and secrecy
3
Lecture 1 - James et al. (2013): How firms Capture Value From Their Innovations 1
Lecture 1 - Sofka et al. (2018): Protecting knowledge: How legal requirements to reveal
information affect the importance of secrecy 7
Lecture 1 - Schilling (2010) Chapter 9: Protecting innovation 10
Lecture 2 - Ceccagnoli (2009): Appropriability, preemption, firm performance 13
Lecture 2 - Teece (1986): Profiting from technological innovation: Implications for
integration, collaboration, licensing and public policy 16
Lecture 2 - Teece (2010): Business models, business strategy and innovation 24
Lecture 3 - van Alstyne et al. (2016): Pipelines, Platforms, and the New Rules of Strategy
29
Lecture 3 - Rietveld & Schilling (2021): Platform Competition: A Systematic and
Interdisciplinary Review of the Literature 31
Lecture 3 - Rietveld et al. (2019): Platform strategy: Managing ecosystem value through
selective promotion of complements 36
Lecture 4 - Broekhuizen et al. (2013): New horizons or a strategic mirage?
Artist-led-distribution versus alliance strategy in the video game industry 40
Lecture 4 - Gemser et al. (2008): Why Some Awards Are More Effective Signals of Quality
Than Others: A Study of Movie Awards 42
Lecture 4 - Hofmann et al. (2016): Empirical generalizations on the impact of stars on the
economic success of movies 45
Lecture 5 - Chesbrough (2006): Open innovation: a new paradigm for understanding
industrial innovation 47
Lecture 5 - Laursen & Salter (2006): Open for innovation: the role of openness in
explaining innovation performance among UK manufacturing firms 49
Lecture 5 - Arora et al. (2016): The paradox of openness revisited: collaborative
innovation and patenting by UK innovators 53
, CVFI papers
Lecture 1 - James et al. (2013): How firms Capture Value From Their
Innovations
Four primary mechanisms (patents, secrecy, lead time, complementary assets) can influence
whether and to which extent firms capture value generated by innovations. The characteristics
of institutions, industries, firms, and individual technologies will affect the selection of particular
value capture mechanisms. This paper helps to understand the conditions under which specific
bundles of value capture mechanisms are most likely to help innovating rims achieve persistent
superior performance.
Limitations of prior research are related to
- Main focus on patents (vs secrecy) not on other mechanism or combinations of
mechanisms
- Characteristics of institutions, industries, firms and individual technologies have been
ignored
- There is no theory to compare when which mechanisms would be most effective to
capture value
Literature review
The literature is about divided into the following areas:
Patents refer to legally granted rights to exclude others from making, signing, selling, importing
an invention, for a limited time, within a given country.
1
, CVFI papers
Secrecy refers to a firm's efforts to protect uniqueness of innovation by withholding technical
details from the public.
Lead time refers to early timing of developing and introducing an innovation
Complementary assets refer to supplementary assets such as manufacturing, distributing,
marketing, or service that are used with the focal innovation.
These 4 mechanisms lead to 16 possible combinations as strategies to capture value.
Identifying and defining contextual conditions
From literature we see 4 contextual conditions
1. Institutional factors such as IP laws
2. Industry characteristics including uncertainty, product differentiation
3. Firm attributes such as focus of R&D, technological capabilities
4. Technology-level characteristics such as complexity and tacitness of knowledge
These four also result in 16 combinations of factors that may affect the selection of the value
capture strategies.
Identifying and defining performance outcomes
Outcome measures in this paper are
- Competitive advantage
- Profits
- Economic performance
Associating contextual conditions and value capture strategy
Patents
Patent mechanism is costly to enforce and create and does not guarantee profits from the
innovation.
The legal protection is often lower and less effective than promised in theory.
The value of patents varies across contexts. Theory should research under which conditions
patenting will provide an effective way to maximize value captured from innovations.
The strength of legal protection is an institutional condition that has often been linked to it.
This varies across product and geographic contexts. Strength of IP regime affects costs of
preventing imitation in two ways:
1. Low penalties lead to more infringements which raises the cost of patent breaches
2. More infringements increase costs as the firms has to claim several rivals.
🡪 firms are less likely to use patents when countries have weak IP regulations or when
enforcement is weak.
An industry-level condition that affects patenting is degree of competitive intensity, number
of competitors, legal enforceability.
Firm-specific condition that affects patenting is scale and scope of R&D, and the ability to
manage IP, and firm size.
Technology specific condition that affects patenting is the nature of technological
knowledge. More complex innovations (communications) have more patentable elements
whereas less complex innovation (pharmaceuticals) have less and are owned by few firms.
Firms in less complex innovation areas can make stronger claims of novelty as they are the only
2
, CVFI papers
ones that own it, therefore they are more likely to win in patent litigations and are more likely to
choose patents.
Secrecy
Secrecy as a value capture mechanism involves internal procedures to restrict the flow of
information within and outside the organization. This increases costs of imitation for rivals, but it
also increases costs for the focal firm as it increases high monitoring costs and leads to lower
employee creativity. The restriction of information flows internally can harm innovation and
creativity. The paradox of disclosure suggests that firms must disclose part of their innovation
to signal its value, but they need to protect it from appropriation.
- In weak IP protection institutional environments firms tend to use secrecy.
- Industry-characteristics such as rivalry and size of competitors also affects use of
secrecy. More intensive competition increases cost of maintaining secrecy.
- Firm-specific characteristic such as efforts to compartmentalize knowledge, suggest
that more secrecy causes lower levels of learning and innovation.
- Technology-specific characteristics indicate that less complex innovations are more
costly to protect via secrecy as they can be imitated more easily. Product innovation is
harder to protect with secrecy compared to process innovation because it can be
observed easily.
Lead time advantages
Can result in competitive advantages but flexibility disadvantages.
- Not much literature on institutional environment characteristics that influence
first-mover advantages of this protection mechanism
- Industry characteristics look at horizontal differentiation (different products) versus
vertical differentiation (quality differences). lead time advantages are contingent on the
stage of industry evolution, ample opportunities exist for research associating other
industry attributes with the selection of a lead time value capture strategy (??)
- Firm-specific characteristics as the degree of technological leadership and switching
costs affect ability to capture value through lead time. Higher absorptive capacity
increases potential to realize first-mover advantages and reduces spillovers.
- Technological characteristics such as codifiability, complexity, observability influence
lead time advantages because more codifiability leads to more rapid transfer to
second-movers.
Complementary assets
When commercializing an innovation requires specialized assets that cannot be accessed in the
factor market, developing those assets internally helps firms to capture value.
- In institutional environments with weak appropriability regimes, complementary assets
can be valuable to capture value.
- With industry differences there are specific complementary assets per industry
- With firms-specific characteristics the imitability is lower. Specialized complementary
assets have more effect compared to generic complementary assets
- Firms that own the complementary assets of a radical technological change are likely
to have a competitive advantage
Patents and secrecy
3
