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Marco Corsino, Università di Bologna

6 June 2012 @ 16:00

 

  • Past event

“External collaborations, on-the-job autonomy and the propensity to use patents to create new firms”

abstract

We analyze patent spinoffs by looking at the organizational characteristics of the parent organization, i.e. the firm where the patented invention has occurred. Understanding the origin of new technology ventures is important because they are the engine of creative destruction and account for a great proportion of economic growth through the creation of a significant share of new jobs. 

Unlike most earlier studies on spinoffs, we go beyond the parent’s size and age to examine the importance of organizational dimensions, like the decisional autonomy of inventors and teamwork, in the formation of new technology ventures and elaborate hypotheses on the association between these characteristics and the likelihood of spinoff. We also account for individual characteristics of the new firm’s founders such as age, R&D experience and risk tolerance.

Our empirical analysis is based on Patval- EU II, Patval-US and Patval-JP surveys conducted within the 7FP InnoS&T project. These surveys draw on EPO patent inventors residents in the US, EU, Japan and Israel. Our unit of analysis is the patent-employer-inventor combination which is at risk of spawning a new patent-based firm.

Probit estimations largely provide support to our hypotheses.