Sustaining value creation in technology-based firms: the role of five protection options in securing rents from new product development

摘要

We examine the use of five strategies of securing rents from incremental product innovations: patents, secrecy, lead time, providing competitive service, and financial strength. We find that 1) regardless of appropriability regime, either formal intellectual property protection or use of non-financial assets for commercialisation of innovations were more important in securing rents from innovations than was the use of financial assets 2) combination of strategies may be the key to effective protection of innovation rents 3) out of patents, secrecy, lead time, services, and financial strength, the latter is the least viable strategy of sustaining new products' value except for market leaders.