Innovation management in crisis: patent analytics as a response to the COVID‐19 pandemic

Abstract

Crises like the COVID‐19 pandemic affect firms’ innovation management and decision making. On the downside, crises lead to detriments like budget constraints, to which firms often respond by reducing their innovation activities. On the upside, crises are opportunities, where some firms exploiting changing market requirements and necessities excel. No matter in which direction, decision makers must react quickly but often rely on ad‐hoc decisions or even gut feeling when drafting their crisis response strategies. Through a series of distinct cases, we demonstrate that innovation management may fill this void through patent analytics. Drawing on biochemical expertise, we particularly describe the functions and effects of COVID‐19. To counter downside detriments, firms may circumvent budget constraints by discerning patents that can be (1) monetized, for example via sales or licensing deals, or (2) abandoned to achieve cost‐savings, allowing firms to maintain their innovation activities. To realize upside opportunities, firms and governments may use patent analytics to detect key biotechnology firms that are likely to successfully develop treatments and vaccinations against pandemics like COVID‐19. Promulgated U.S. interest in relocating foreign firms to the United States is not without technological and commercial reasoning. Herein, the insights of this study contribute to a better understanding of the use of patent information, such as smart patent indicators, harmonized patent data, novel annuity fee measures, and hand‐collected datasets of COVID‐19 and related antibodies’ patents to the management of innovation in times of crisis.

Influential Factors of Network Changes: Dynamic Network Ties and Sustainable Startup Embeddedness

“…Besides that, the impact of external shocks, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, on network changes for sustainable business development should be investigated in greater detail [52]. Additionally, as already postulated by Soetanto et al [3], interpersonal factors should be further investigated since the educational level [6] and the reduction of uncertainty [5] could be more important in startups embedded into other industries.…”

La empresa española ante la COVID-19: factores de adaptación al nuevo escenario

“…La innovación se ha convertido durante las últimas décadas en un elemento fundamental para la supervivencia de las empresas, cuando anteriormente había sido considerada como elemento diferenciador. Y en el entorno turbulento marcado por la COVID-19, el factor innovación de las empresas está siendo percibido como catalizador de la gestión eficiente de las organizaciones y como generador de oportunidades a múltiples niveles de su cadena de valor (Guderian et al, 2020;Lee & Trimi, 2020;Sharma et al, 2020).…”

Making Intellectual Property a Common Good to Combat Global Pandemics and the COVID-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP): Responding to the Challenges Exerted by Big Pharma and Some High-Income Countries

“…In general, the proposal was aimed at accelerating access to research outcomes, intellectual property and shared data through a collaborative global effort (Abbas, 2020b) As seen, all five objectives of the C-TAP associate with multiple forms of IPRs that may be involved in the process of developing and distributing COVID-19 treatment. Accordingly, this global initiative lays a foundation to consider different IPRs such as patents (Guderian, Bican, Riar, & Chattopadhyay, 2021) , copyrights (Abeysekara, 2011 and, know-how, and software rights (Kumar, Gupta, & Srivastava, 2020) to be considered as a common good for the sole purpose of accelerating global efforts to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. These objectives do not necessarily mean that the C-TAP would remove entire IPRs from its holders; instead, they require right holders to respect and accommodate the public health exceptions associated with IPRs concerning the global pandemic situation (Baldini and Bonadio, 2020).…”