Martin A. Bader

This paper evaluates the ability of “forced technology transfer” (FTT) policies – i.e., policies meant to increase foreign-domestic technology transfer that simultaneously weaken appropriability of foreign innovations – to contribute to technology transfer. We focus on transfer of frontier technology in China's newly designated “strategic emerging industries” (SEIs). Drawing on a survey of foreign firms, extensive interviews with foreign firms, and case studies of Chinese firms, we identify three categories of FTT policies in SEIs: “lose the market”, “no choice”, and “violate the law” policies. Our thematic analysis finds that FTT policies likely exert the most leverage over (i.e., force) frontier technology transfer when accompanied by seven conditions: (1) strong state support for industrial growth, (2) oligopoly competition, (3) other policies closely complementing FTT policies, (4) high technological uncertainty, (5) policy mode of operation offering basic appropriability and tailored to industrial structure, (6) reform avoidance by the state, and (7) stringent policy compliance mechanisms. We develop a Strategy & Risk Matrix to forecast the overall leverage of individual FTT policies. We conclude that Chinese FTT policies may enable domestic acquisition of frontier foreign technology if all seven conditions determining policy leverage are fully exploited by the state. However, if this is not the case, the policies have weaker leverage and may even discourage technology transfer.

As an overarching concept a business model describes how a firm creates and captures value for itself, its customers, and its partners. Although research has highlighted the importance of value creation and capture of business models, it primarily focused on the value creation mechanisms and neglected aspects of value capturing: Until to date, little is known about how firms attempt to protect their business models from competition, which is a critical component of value capture. Drawing on a sample of 24 cases, we explore how business models relate to IP protection mechanisms for value capture and derive a business model protection framework. Our empirical study reveals that the choice of IP protection is contingent on the applied business model. Whereas some razor and blade business models are characterized by a high degree of both formal and informal protection, firms operating franchising business models put higher emphasis on informal protection strategies. Firms running the pay-per-use business model or the multi-sided platform business model apply formal and informal protection strategies to a medium degree in order to capture value. Our findings extend business model literature on novel insights on intellectual property management and also extend the ‘profiting from innovation literature’ on protection mechanisms in the context of business models.

In open innovation systems, capturing value through external intellectual property (IP) commercialization is an increasingly important strategy for firms to keep pace with competitive changes. However, many firms have major difficulties in creating value through external patent exploitation. To understand these challenges, this paper explores how firms manage their external patent exploitation based on a multiple case study research design with fourteen firms from the pharmaceutical and chemical industry. Adopting a desorptive capacity perspective we find four main factors influencing the firms' management of external patent exploitation: the type of value creation, the organizational structure, the locus of initiative, and the extent of know-how transfer along with the patent. Based on these factors, three archetypes of external patent exploitation with different levels of desorptive capacity are identified. The article extends the concept of desorptive capacity and existing literature on intellectual property management in the context of open innovation. Managerial implications helping firms to implement external IP commercialization structures are discussed.

Effectively managing and optimizing the value of the patent portfolio is a major challenge for many firms, especially those in knowledge intensive industries, such as the pharmaceutical, biotechnological and chemical industry. However, insights on effective patent portfolio strategies are rare. Therefore, in this article we investigate in detail how firms successfully manage and optimize their patent portfolios to increase their overall competitiveness. We discover that successful patent portfolio management is rooted in managing the patents along their life cycles. Based on the findings of ten case studies, we develop a holistic patent life cycle management model reflecting five distinctive phases of patent management: explore, generate, protect, optimize and decline. We conclude with how our findings can be used in practice.

The effective management of intellectual property (IP) is an increasingly complex challenge in today's global knowledge economy, especially for firms with large IP portfolios. Although information technology (IT) tools are a means to support the management of these portfolios, there is little insight in how firms actually make use of IT tools in this regard. Hence, this article analyzes how and for which processes firms use IT tools to support their IP management. Based on a data set of 106 IP intensive firms worldwide, we find that firms use at least one of three major IT tools for IP management: search tools, administrative tools, and evaluation tools. We also find that the use of IT for IP processes is decreasing along the IP value chain: firms use IT mainly in the early IP generation phase, e.g., for absorbing technological developments. The article concludes by outlining where and how IT tools can improve the management of IP.

Corporate R&D is under pressure. Whereas innovative technology remains one of the most important business growth factors, it is diffi cult to link the outcomes of corporate R&D activities directly to a fi rm's market performance. Although new technologies mostly originate from R&D laboratories, their market success depends on multiple production, marketing, and sales-related factors that eclipse the research contribution.

Managing intellectual property plays a crucial role in a collaborative innovation environment by providing legal protection, especially when supporting factual protection strategies that enable profits from temporary monopolies. However, legal protection strategies are a novelty in emerging business fields, such as the knowledge-intensive industry sector, as innovation and value creation are shifting towards service innovations that are difficult to tackle by legal protection instruments. The ways in which intellectual property can be managed in such an environment is, therefore, the subject of this research that follows a multiple-case design. Four dominant patterns get identified, discussed and summarised with respect to the collaborative knowledge-intensive industry environment: (1) multiplicator, (2) leverager, (3) absorber, (4) filtrator.

Legal protection strategies are still a relatively new phenomenon in emerging business fields like the service industry sector. Especially patents are considered novel as intellectual property means for protecting service innovations, which particularly accounts for the Knowledge Intensive Business Services (KIBS) sector. This contribution focuses on the opportunities and risks of managing intellectual property in the financial services industry sector by empirically analysing the leading reinsurance company Swiss Re. Swiss Re is considered to be one of the first (re-) insurance organizations worldwide that created its own patent department and today carries out a consistent legal protection strategy. The in-depth single-case study design is based on a triple iterative research process. The paper concludes with a success factor model for managing intellectual property to protect service innovations in the financial services industry sector.

This paper outlines the increasing importance that intellectual property has achieved in inter-firm research and development collaborations with respect to the new economy industry sector. It is based on an explorative, case study-based research approach that was chosen because of the novelty of managing intellectual property in research and development collaborations as an empirical phenomenon. Starting from theoretically derived core components for managing intellectual property in research and development collaborations, this contribution analyses successful practices of a leading information technology and service innovation company, namely IBM, within the new economy sector. The paper concludes with a procedural model for managing intellectual property by asserting that its consideration is essential in conducting and exploiting a sustainable collaboration.