Prior research shows that cross-functional management impacts firm performance. Using stewardship theory, we hypothesize that family firms have a high proclivity to pursue cross-functional management. We test our hypothesis in the context of patent management and find that family firms pursue...

The ability of firms to effectively use mechanisms that support them in appropriating value from innovation is key to outperforming competitors. Yet, such mechanisms have, for the most part, been studied in isolation, without accounting for interactions between them. We address this gap by...

Reusing code that is downloadable from the Internet - particularly open source software (OSS) code - in commercial software development is attractive for both firms and their software developers. However, to avoid serious economic and legal consequences for firms, the license obligations of the...

Profiting from technological innovation requires both the development of new products and the capture or appropriation of profits from them. For new product development, the interplay of marketing and R&D has been intensively researched. In contrast, on the issue of capturing value it has been...

Patent trolls appropriate profits from innovation solely by enforcing patents against infringers. They are often characterized as relying on low-quality patents, an assessment that, if correct, would imply that eradicating such patents would effectively terminate the troll business. In this...

The focus of existing open source software (OSS) research has been on how and why individuals and firms add to the commons of public OSS code - that is, on the “giving” side of this open innovation process. In contrast, research on the corresponding “receiving” side of the innovation...

In this paper, we suggest an approach to application identification based on von Hippel’s lead user method, adapted in such a way that it starts from a given technology rather than from an application area. Our approach complements existing methods for application identification, but it also...

Patent trolls appropriate innovation rents by threatening to block other players’ R&D-related value creation. Legal loopholes and inefficiencies in court practice have been identified as drivers of these ‘locking-in-to-extort’ strategies, which might suggest that policy changes can...