R&D activity, Equity finance, Small- and medium-sized enterprises, G 32, O 32, L 26,

Die Dis cus si on Pape rs die nen einer mög lichst schnel len Ver brei tung von neue ren For schungs arbei ten des ZEW. Die Bei trä ge lie gen in allei ni ger Ver ant wor tung der Auto ren und stel len nicht not wen di ger wei se die Mei nung des ZEW dar.Dis cus si on Papers are inten ded to make results of ZEW research prompt ly avai la ble to other eco no mists in order to encou ra ge dis cus si on and sug gesti ons for revi si ons. The aut hors are sole ly respon si ble for the con tents which do not neces sa ri ly repre sent the opi ni on of the ZEW.Download this ZEW Discussion Paper from our ftp server:ftp://ftp.zew.de/pub/zew-docs/dp/dp08101.pdf Non-technical summaryIn recent years, the view of patents as a policy tool to stimulate R&D has increasingly come under criticism. The theoretical literature has shown that when research is sequential and builds upon previous innovations, stronger patents may discourage follow-on inventions and a debate has emerged over the extent to which patent "thickets" may stifle innovation. Patent thickets can be defined as "a dense web of overlapping intellectual property rights that a company must hack its way through in order to actually commercialize new technology".While some progress has been made in empirically characterizing thickets in terms of fragmented ownership of patent rights, there is very little evidence about how effectively the market for technology can mitigate their effects, and the extent to which this affects innovative performance.In this paper, we investigate these questions using survey data on licensing activity and innovation by German manufacturing and service firms. We use indexes of fragmentation of patent rights based on the patent portfolios of firms operating in the respective technologies of the German companies.We find evidence that firms facing patent thickets have a higher propensity to engage in inlicensing. Therefore markets for technology may provide an effective mitigating mechanism for the defragmentation of rights. We then analyze the relationship between fragmentation and innovative performance, considering separately firms requiring access to patented technology (in-licensors) and firms that do not require this access (non-licensors). For firms that report positive expenditures on inlicensing, we find a negative relationship between fragmentation of IP rights and innovative performance as measured by introduction of new products. This is consistent with the hypothesis that, for firms that require licenses to commercialize new technology, the fragmentation of upstream property rights hampers innovation. The negative effect on product innovation is particularly strong for in-licensing firms with few patents, which suggests an important strategic role for building up a large patent portfolio in the context of fragmented property rights. Das Wichtigste in KürzeIn performance, but only for firms that engage in in-licensing and only for product innovation. The relationship between fragmentation and innovative performance also depends on...

Purpose This paper aims to examine the effect of shared leadership on both quantity and quality of team performance, predicting that shared leadership enhances performance by affecting quantity (level of performance) as well as quality (team errors). In addition, this paper also investigates the role of perceived task complexity in moderating the effect of sharing leadership on team performance. Design/methodology/approach In total, 26 teams (N = 78) were asked to work on an interdependent team-task, where they engaged in a laboratory team decision-making exercise. Findings Results revealed that teams sharing leadership made fewer errors. They achieved higher levels of quality of performance. As predicted, this effect was stronger when team members perceived the task as highly complex, even though objective task difficulty was constant. Research limitations/implications This study extends current literature on shared leadership by documenting that sharing the lead in teams can also improve the quality of team performance and that perceived complexity of tasks is an important moderator of this effect. Practical implications Based on the findings, influencing perceptions of task complexity can be considered as an important strategy to stimulate shared leadership in teams. Originality/value Using social network approach, the authors showed that shared leadership is an important tool for preventing team errors and offer a new explanation for inconsistent findings from recent meta-analyses by showing that perceived task complexity moderates the effects of shared leadership. Additionally, this study offers an original team task for investigating shared leadership in teams.

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