دانلود رایگان ترجمه مقاله شرکت های کوچک، نوآوری تعاونی و استراتژی های تخصیص (نشریه الزویر 2009)

اگر شما نمی توانید بلوکه کنید، بهتر است اجرا کنید: شرکت های کوچک، نوآوری تعاونی و استراتژی های تخصیص

If you cannot block, you better run: Small firms, cooperative innovation, and appropriation strategies

Abstract

This empirical study examines small firms’ strategies for capturing returns to investments in innovation. We find that small firms’ strategies are qualitatively different from those found in earlier studies of both small and large firms. Most of the small firms examined here find informal means of protection, such as speed to market or secrecy, more important than patenting. Only firms with university cooperation—typically R&D intensive and science-based small firms—were likely to identify patents as the most important method of appropriating innovation returns in their field. Thus, the strategic choice for most small firms is between secrecy and speed to market. Firms that cooperate in innovation with horizontal partners or significantly depend on vertical partners tend to prefer speed, whereas process innovators with modest R&D investments or few cooperative R&D activities display a preference for trade secrets. Indeed, cooperation activities greatly influence the choice of intellectual property strategy for small firms. Earlier research has emphasized patents and trade secrets as key strategies of appropriation, yet these strategies do not appear to be very beneficial for small firms engaged in cooperative innovation. These results raise policy questions regarding the functionality of the existing system of intellectual property rights.

1 Introduction

Innovators’ capacity to benefit from their investments in knowledge creation is a central concern in innovation and technology policy. Firms’ opportunities to protect the returns from their innovation activities—appropriability—have been identified as one of the key incentives for innovation (Levin et al., 1987), and as a justification for the intellectual property rights system itself (Gallini, 2002; Kultti et al., 2006). This study explores intellectual property (IP) strategies of small Finnish manufacturing and service firms. We find that patents, although usually emphasized in the study of IP protection, are not a very important mechanism for most small firms. Additionally, we find that few firms rely on trade secrets. Our novel finding is that most small firms, and particularly small firms that engage in cooperative innovation activities with external partners, emphasize speed to market as the most important protection mechanism. On this basis, we argue that small firms’ IP strategies differ from those of larger firms, and because of the economic importance of innovation by small firms, intellectual property rights policies should be re-evaluated from the small-firm perspective.

This study is based on a diverse sample of small firms and a broad set of intellectual property protection mechanisms. We conduct a statistical analysis of small and innovative Finnish manufacturing and service firms that suggests that the importance of patenting depends on the firm’s research orientation: firms cooperating with universities and firms with high R&D investments indicate patents are helpful for appropriation. In this regard, our results corroborate those of Gans et al. (2002) and Gans and Stern (2003). However, patenting firms are a rather small subset of the sample; roughly 12% of all firms and 19% of innovating firms in the sample have any patents, and these firms are concentrated in chemicals and R&D services.

Apart from research-oriented firms, a large majority of small firms do not view patents as the most important IP protection mechanism. Most firms rely on the informal strategies of secrecy and speed to market in protecting their innovation returns. We find consistent evidence that cooperation with external partners in innovation or other business activities has significant implications for the perceived benefits of different IP strategies. Small firms with significant vertical relationships (clients or suppliers that provide a third or more of the focal firm’s business) or horizontal collaborative innovation arrangements are statistically significantly more likely than other firms to emphasize speed instead of secrecy in attempting to protect innovation returns, controlling for other firm and industry characteristics. We interpret this result in the light of small firms’ limited bargaining power within external relationships. Small firms are likely to be dealing with partners larger than themselves, in which case they may be in a weak position to appropriate the intellectual outputs from joint work. Moreover, patenting may not be a useful strategy for the lack of resources to apply for and defend patents. In an intensive cooperation arrangement, secrecy might not work either, because external partners may be able to learn and pass on the technological secrets of the focal small firm.

The rest of the paper is organized as follows. We first discuss earlier studies on IP strategies and inter-firm cooperation in order to derive hypotheses about small firms’ strategies to protect innovation returns. We then introduce the Finnish survey dataset and carry out the empirical analyses. The last section discusses the implications of our empirical results for research and policy.