According to Foster (1986), technological progress naturally forms an S-curve. However, this study examines the progress of manufacturable sheet glass thickness using the float process and reveals that license agreements with grant-back clauses shape technological progress, indicated by an S-curve. More specifically, a competition for development was generated among licensees of the float process during the initial phase of licensing. Progress accelerated in the range of thicknesses in which plates could be manufactured. Nonetheless, at the end of license terms when parties are aware of expiring patents, research and development is suppressed due to grant-back clauses. This occurred because the parties attempted to outflank the competition after patents have expired. Thus, technological progress halts; however, this is a false S-curve that is not based on natural law. In fact, in the case of a float process, technological progress began once again after patents expired.
This paper employs data on patent applications for the glass industry's float process from 1954 through 2015. Furthermore, it assesses whether the S-curve of technological progress emerges. Assigning time to the horizontal axis, something like the S-curve emerges in the US and Europe but not in Japan. The S-curve represents the physical limits of technology. Specifically, Foster (1986) defined the S-curve as the function that expresses the relation between the amount of effort expended toward performance improvement and its outcome. The magnitude of the effort expended depends on the company as well as social factors. This paper performs company-level analysis using actual data to examine (1) the extent to which companies respond to the demands of the market and (2) the effect of the grant-back clauses in licensing agreements suggested by Ogami (2015).
This study examines how the performance of startups during the time period up to their initial public offering (IPO) is affected by the macro environment, a topic that has not been given much consideration to date. Taking the end of 2012 (the beginning of Abenomics), when Japan's economic environment shifted to a hot market, as the transition point, we analyzed companies that did IPOs in terms of such variables as the target market, the attributes of the companies in the sample (type of entrepreneurship), and the date of their actual establishment. We found that for those companies operating in an economically favorable environment,
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