Why do so many high-priced acquisitions of entrepreneurial firms take place in network industries? We develop a theory of commercialization (entry or sale) in network industries showing that high equilibrium acquisition prices are driven by the incumbents' desire to prevent rivals from acquiring...

According to Schumpeter, the creative process of economic development can be divided into three distinguishable stages of invention, innovation (commercialization) and imitation. We show why there is a rationale for the Schumpeterian entrepreneur to also include the inventor in the innovation...

In this paper, I analyze the commercialization of patents in the Swedish medicine & hygiene sector. A unique database makes it possible to use a new method, where I follow the commercialization process of individual patents. A surprisingly low share (10%) of the inventions was discovered at...

External financing is important when inventors and small technology-based firms wish to commercialize their inventions. However, it is likely that problems related to adverse selection and moral hazard are present, and market failures occur, since inventors know more about the inventions than do...

Firms and governments spend billions of dollars on R&D every year. To increase social welfare, the results of R&D must be commercialized so that consumers can benefit from improved products and lower prices. One measure of R&D output is patents; however, most patent databases contain no...

This paper analyzes how institutional differences affect university entrepreneurship. We focus on ownership of faculty inventions, and compare two institutional regimes; the US and Sweden. In the US, the Bayh-Dole Act gives universities the right to own inventions from publicly funded...

One of the major reasons why inventors are awarded patents by governments is they encourage R&D investments and commercialization of inventions. If the patent holder commercializes his invention, he has stronger incentives to retain the patent. The purpose here is to empirically analyze the...

This paper examines the interaction between intellectual property protection and competition policy on the choice of entrepreneurs with respect to commercialization as well as the rate of innovation. We find that stronger intellectual property protection makes it more likely that entrepreneurs...

Using a unique database on individual Swedish patents, a survival model estimates how different factors influence the time it takes until commercialization starts. To the best of my knowledge, such an analysis has not been undertaken before. For external financing of patent projects and small...