No abstract

No abstract

Firms increasingly acquire technological knowledge from external sources to improve their innovation performance. This strategic approach is known as inbound open innovation. The existing empirical evidence regarding the impact of inbound open innovation on performance, however, is ambiguous. The equivocal results are due to moderating factors that influence a firm's ability to acquire technological knowledge from external sources and to transform it into innovation outputs. This paper focuses on a relevant yet overlooked category of moderating factors: organization of research and development (R&D). It explores two organizational mechanisms: one informal and external-oriented (involvement of external consultants in R&D activities) and one formalized and internal-oriented (existence of a dedicated R&D unit), in the acquisition of technological knowledge through R&D outsourcing, a particular contractual form for inbound open innovation.Drawing on a capabilities perspective and using a longitudinal dataset of 841 Spanish manufacturing firms observed over the period 1999-2007, this paper provides a fine-grained analysis of the moderating effects of the two organizational mechanisms. The involvement of external consultants in R&D activities strengthens the impact of inbound open innovation on innovation performance by increasing marginal benefits of acquiring external technological knowledge through R&D outsourcing. Moreover, it reduces the level of inbound open innovation to which the highest innovation performance corresponds. Instead, the existence of a dedicated R&D unit makes the firm less sensitive to changes in the level of inbound open innovation, by reducing marginal benefits of acquiring external technological knowledge through R&D outsourcing, and increases the level of inbound open innovation to which the highest innovation performance corresponds.The results regarding the role of informal and formalized R&D organizational mechanisms contribute to research on open innovation and absorptive capacity, and also inform managers as to what organizational mechanism is recommended to acquire external technological knowledge, depending on the objectives that the firm pursues.

This work studies the effect of venture capital (VC) financing on firms' investments in a longitudinal sample of 379 Italian unlisted new-technology-based firms (NTBFs) observed over the 10-year period from 1994 to 2003. We distinguish the effects of VC financing according to the type of investor: independent VC (IVC) funds and corporate VC (CVC) investors. Previous studies argue that NTBFsare the firms most likely to be financially constrained. The technology-intensive nature of their activity and their lack of a track record increase adverse selection and moral hazard problems. Moreover, most of their assets are firm-specific or intangible and hence cannot be pledged as collateral. In accordance with this view, we show that the investment rate of NTBFs is strongly positively correlated with their current cash flows. We also find that after receiving VC financing, NTBFs increase their investment rate independently of the type of VC investor. However, the investments of CVC-backed firms remain sensitive to shocks in cash flows, whereas IVC-backed firms exhibit a low and statistically not significant investment-cash flow sensitivity that we interpret as a signal of the removal of financial constraints.

No abstract

We use the lens of the resource-based view and horizontal agency cost theory to analyse the effect of the presence of different types of individual owners, i.e., owner-managers and non-manager individual shareholders, on the performance of high-tech entrepreneurial firms. Ownership enlargement may contribute to fill the resource gap faced by entrepreneurial firms and improve firm performance. However, whereas owner-managers engender low horizontal agency costs, non-manager individual shareholders generate high horizontal agency problems because of their limited managerial involvement. Our results on a sample of Italian high-tech entrepreneurial firms show that the number of owner-managers has a positive effect on firm performance, whereas the effect of the number of non-manager individual shareholders is negligible. This latter effect becomes more positive, even though still not statistically significant, when firms are highly leveraged confirming the disciplining role of bank debt.

In this article, we study the decision-making criteria that business angels (BAs) adopt when screening business opportunities in the different assessment phases (pre-screening, screening and due diligence). We exploit an original dataset of 1942 ventures that sought angel investment from 2008 to 2014 from the members of Italian Angels for Growth (IAG). Results have shown that the emphasis that BAs place on rejection criteria and contact channels varies along the three considered stages of the investment process. In particular, we found that business proposals brought to the attention of BAs by venture capitalists are more likely to get through the pre-screening stage, suggesting an important quality certification role played by venture capitalists. Moreover, at the screening stage (in comparison with the pre-screening stage), proposals are rejected more often for reasons related to the characteristics of the entrepreneur and management team and less often for the lack of business innovativeness. Finally, business proposals showing lower levels of profitability are more likely to be rejected after the due diligence.

Since the seminal works of Wetzel, research on business angels (BAs) has emerged as a new and promising research field. This review analyses the current knowledge on BAs, identifying the main contents and outcomes. We also provide a bibliometric analysis to illustrate the evolution of the research field, the level of dispersion of the scientific community, the main outlets for publication and the different methodological approaches adopted. Through the analysis of backward and forward citations, we depict the current knowledge base on which BA research is grounded and whether it has any impact on other research fields.