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How did the diffusion of the Internet influence research collaborations within firms? We examine the relationship between business use of basic Internet technology and the size and geographic composition of industrial research teams between 1992 and 1998. We find robust empirical evidence that basic Internet adoption is associated with an increased likelihood of collaborative patents from geographically dispersed teams. On the contrary, we find no evidence of such a link between Internet adoption and within-location collaborative patents, nor do we find any evidence of a relationship between basic Internet and single-inventor patents. We interpret these results as evidence that adoption of basic Internet significantly reduced the coordination costs of research teams, but find little evidence that a drop in the costs of shared resource access significantly improved research productivity. This paper was accepted by Lee Fleming, entrepreneurship and innovation.

Few executives would dispute that digitization's disruptive influence is growing. But surprisingly little empirical evidence has captured either the magnitude of digital disruption or how incumbents are reacting. Leaders know they have a problem but lack guidance to determine the right course of action. In a global survey of 2,000 C-suite executives in more than 60 countries, McKinsey & Co. found that few companies are responding appropriately to digital disruption. While 90% of companies indicated that they are engaged in some form of digitization, only 16% said their companies have responded with a bold strategy and at scale; only 30% of companies are focusing on new ways to bundle demand or resegment their market. Based on these numbers, some leaders might assume that they have plenty of time to get their digital acts together. But the authors argue that this would be a dangerous assumption because new digital entrants are seizing a significant share of revenue across regions and industries. The authors highlight three bold tactics companies can use: 1. Develop new customer segments. Rather than just defending existing business lines through cost cutting, automation, or service improvements for existing customers, companies should focus on developing new customer segments. Medialaan NV, a leading free-to-air video broadcaster in Belgium, spotted young customers moving to platforms such as Netflix or YouTube. In response, it bought a mobile virtual operator with attractive data plans, thus becoming one of the few traditional broadcast companies to grow its TV audience in the youth segment. 2. Introduce new business models. Innovative companies are experimenting with business models intended to disrupt their own legacy strategies. When Schibsted Media Group of Oslo, Norway, saw that its print classified advertising was drying up, it moved the classified business to a free online marketplace. Today, more than 80% of the group's earnings come from commissions on sales from its consumer e-commerce platform. 3. Redefine the value chain. When digital entrants threatened its payment services business, Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) chose to confront the disrupters head-on with a new open payments platform that hosts an ecosystem of applications and devices for merchants and is open to third-party developers. Although the platform and its ecosystem contribute to the disruption of the traditional banking value-add chain, it also positions CBA to compete with digital entrants.

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to look at the sharp increase in academic patenting over the past 20 years and to raise important issues regarding the generation and diffusion of academic knowledge. Three key questions may be raised in this respect: What is behind the surge in academic patenting? Does patenting affect the quality and quantity of universities' scientific output? Does the patent system limit the freedom to perform academic research? The present paper seeks to summarize the existing literature on these issues.Design methodology approach - The paper's approach is a review of the recent literature on academic patenting and research use of patented inventions, complemented with critical viewpoints and new data on academic patenting in Europe.Findings - The evidence suggests that academic patenting has only limited effects on the direction, pace and quality of research. A virtuous cycle seems to characterise the patent-publication relationship. Secondly, scientific anti-commons show very little effects on academic researchers so far, limited to a few countries with weak or no research exemption regulations. In summary, the evidence leads the authors to conclude that the benefits of academic patenting on research exceed their potential negative effects.Originality value - The paper offers a critical overview of the available evidence on the links between patents and academic research, which may be useful both for individuals unfamiliar with this issue or for those experienced in the field who are looking for a state of the art discussion on recent debates.

We compare patent litigation cases across four European jurisdictions—Germany, the UK (England and Wales), France, The Netherlands—using case-level data gathered from cases filed in the four jurisdictions during the period 2000–2008. Overall, we find substantial differences across jurisdictions in terms of caseloads—notably, courts in Germany hear by far the largest number of cases, not only in absolute terms, but also when taking macro-economic indicators into account—and we further find important cross-country variances in terms of case outcomes. Moreover, we show empirically that a considerable number of patents are litigated across multiple European jurisdictions; and further, that in the majority of these cases divergent case outcomes are reached across the different jurisdictions, suggesting that the long-suspected problem of inconsistency of decision-making in European patent litigation is in fact real. Finally, we note that the coming into force of the Unified Patent Court in Europe may, in the long term, help to alleviate this inconsistency problem.

Returns on investing into digital technologies by incumbents may be low as result of them facing adjustment costs. We derive benchmarks of returns to digital investments while demonstrating that returns are enhanced by strategic renewal at sufficient turbulence levels. We also demonstrate the relative contribution of four organizational drivers (risk-appetite, threat sensing, new capabilities, and leadership involvement) in shaping those returns, through their joint effects on both strategic renewal propensity and incumbent organizations’ commitment to large digital investment programmes. Entrepreneurial leadership is a core component of successful digitization programmes both directly through top management involvement in digital projects, as well as indirectly though leadership building awareness of value at risk and by engaging in complementary digital capabilities.

As digital technologies emerge and improve rapidly, firms face changing tradeoffs in terms of their technology infrastructure and strategic direction. Hence, many of them adopt new digital technology and develop new business models and strategies. The literature on strategic alignment of IT suggests that firms need to synchronize these different domains of choice. We therefore, ask how far firms renew their strategy as they adopt new technologies. In this article, we study this question empirically by assessing if the adoption of new digital technologies is associated with, or even leads to, changes to firm strategy using a detailed survey-based dataset on firms’ strategy renewal and their adoption of digital technologies. We observe a strong positive association between the extent of strategy change and the stage of adoption of advanced digital technologies overall, suggesting a tight coupling between (technological) structure and strategy. Further, using instrumental variable regressions to disentangle the two effects, we find that the adoption of new technologies may lead to a large and robust effect on strategy change: the more extensive the adoption, the larger the change in strategy. This result is robust to various specifications and across industries. However, we notice substantial differences across technologies, potentially pointing at heterogeneity in their strategic nature or maturity level.