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Gene Barretta’s books Neo Leo: The ageless ideas of Leonardo da Vinci, Now & Ben: The modern inventions of Benjamin Franklin, and timeless Thomas: How Thomas Edison changed our lives give us a glimpse into the famous inventors’ lives and introduce us to their incredible inventions. Neo Leo immerses readers in Leonardo da Vinci’s world as an artist, inventor, engineer, and scientist. Leonardo da Vinci wrote and drew detailed pictures of innumerable inventions, but never had the chance to build many of them. Now & Ben chronicles the life of Benjamin Franklin who used his common sense and innovative thinking to design inventions that changed society and our culture. Timeless Thomas provides readers with the opportunity to examine Thomas Edison’s inventions and how they have changed over time. The following lessons were designed to introduce the young child to the world of inventors and challenge them to invent.

To investigate the relationship between technological diversification and firm performance as a function of varying levels of technological coupling and internal technological change.

A longitudinal study of US-based bio-pharmaceutical companies.

Technological diversification improves invention performance. However, high levels of technological coupling reduce this effect.

Firms with highly diversified technological portfolios should strive to keep their technologies at low levels of technological coupling.

This is the first study to show that technological coupling reduces the positive effect of technological diversification on firms' invention performance.

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, the article explores an understudied side of invention commercialization–the rejection of business as something “dirty” among Russian scientists. As such, the paper contributes to the individual-level explanations of innovation promotion, hence balancing extant literature's excessive focus on institutional explanations. Second, the article suggests that Russian scientists' rejection of business is rooted in broader Russian work ethics rift between “material” and “ideational” aspects of life. As such, the paper shows how dominant collective values refract in the management practice of specific social class, i.e. of scientists.

To analyze the rift between material and ideational aspects of Russian scientists' work, the article employs directed content analysis (DCA) of in-depth interviews with 45 Russian scholars. To address credibility bias of the research findings stemming from DCA, I further draw on the survey of existing studies, researches and polls highlighting Russian population attitudes toward the dichotomy between “material” and “ideal” realms.

This study argues that Russian scientists' likelihood of invention commercialization is positively associated with their ability to integrate in a personal psyche business and science as equally valuable facets of life.

The article identifies the three groups of scientists – opportunity-seekers, idealists and integrators – with different attitudes to invention commercialization. The article shows how policymakers should apply institutional incentives differently to each group of scientists to achieve higher rates of invention commercialization.

Firms increasingly diversify their technological competencies to achieve different strategic objectives. This study aims to explore the impacts of technological knowledge characteristics on patenting choices for inventions created by subsidiaries in an uncertain and fast changing environment.

The data used in this study are patents granted to the world largest firms by the USPTO for inventions attributable to their subsidiaries in China between 1996 and 2005. In addition, the patent data from State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) of China are used for the matching in terms of filing patent applications in both USA and China for a same piece of technology. A discrete Logit model is used to examine the effects of technological distance and categories on Chinese patent application and international priority.

The findings suggest that firms have priority to seek international patent protection, instead of host country protection, for valuable subsidiary inventions in their background and marginal technological fields. In addition, a firm may seek host country legal protection simultaneously for inventions built upon knowledge from technologically distant fields.

As we are more interested in protecting technological knowledge, the protection of other types of knowledge, such as organizational knowledge, deserves further research attentions. Moreover, future research may expand current study by including small and medium firms, as well as firms in other developing economies.

While the economic and legal environment in China may have evolved since studied period, the results have practical implications for firms in other developing countries that are at an early stage of catching-up or those in a host location featuring a similar uncertain and fast changing environment. In particular, the study suggests that foreign firm managers would have more strategic choices of patenting than local firms in the host country. For strategically important inventions bridging complex knowledge from different technological areas, firms could seek protection in multiple countries simultaneously, including both home country and other major markets. Furthermore, managers could choose whether or not to protect a particular category of technologies in host country depending on value of the technology to the firm and the IPR protection of host country. Finally, the approach of looking at knowledge-level characteristics, which can be easily measured through readily available intra-firm information, provides managers with a practical and useful tool to make these strategic decisions.

This study represents an effort to extend the understanding on how foreign MNCs could generate and appropriate valuable technologies in an uncertain and fast-changing environment. In particular, the authors focus on how MNCs could use different international patenting patterns to benefit from subsidiary inventions. Whereas previous literature mainly focuses on country-level and firm-level determinants, this study approaches the topic through the lens of knowledge-level factors. By studying how knowledge characteristics determine firm strategic behaviors, the authors offer additional justifications of the knowledge-based view of the firm. Meanwhile, the findings enrich our understanding of an important component of MNC’s global strategies in managing their technologies through selectively patenting in different locations. Firms pursue diversified technologies for different strategic objectives. As subsidiary inventions become a very important source of firm competitiveness, MNCs have to face the trade-off between higher patenting costs and the appropriability of subsidiary generated knowledge. The findings suggest that it is not necessary for MNCs to protect all subsidiary inventions in host countries.

Briefly reviews previous literature by the author before presenting an original 12 step system integration protocol designed to ensure the success of companies or countries in their efforts to develop and market new products. Looks at the issues from different strategic levels such as corporate, international, military and economic. Presents 31 case studies, including the success of Japan in microchips to the failure of Xerox to sell its invention of the Alto personal computer 3 years before Apple: from the success in DNA and Superconductor research to the success of Sunbeam in inventing and marketing food processors: and from the daring invention and production of atomic energy for survival to the successes of sewing machine inventor Howe in co‐operating on patents to compete in markets. Includes 306 questions and answers in order to qualify concepts introduced.

This paper addresses the geographical dimension of cross-border knowledge integration, expressed as the co-invention of patent filings and investigates the siting of patenting activities by major US corporations in China. Most importantly, the study looks into the patterns of international co-invention or the links of these locations to headquarters and other company subsidiaries.

The study explores the cases of six US multinationals that file international patent applications in China. The applications were analyzed based on the composition of invention teams and the locations of inventors.

The co-invented patent filings by US multinational enterprises (MNEs) in China demonstrate a high degree of US–Chinese subsidiary collaboration. Links with other subsidiaries are marginal, and at the same time, high levels of sole patenting by inventors in China point to competence-creating research and development (R&D) activities taking place.

The lack of subsidiary-subsidiary collaboration, especially subsidiaries in other emerging markets, indicates a less diversified strategy of leveraging internal networks of knowledge. This also implies that Chinese subsidiaries still lack attractiveness as partners in subsidiary-subsidiary co-invention. Only two companies in our sample, Procter & Gamble and Intel, demonstrate a highly diversified, integrated and transnational pattern of innovation management.

The paper contributes to the contextual understanding of the rich landscape of R&D activities of major US MNEs in China. By exploring these cases, the paper identifies a number of trends. First, the R&D activities in this sample are highly concentrated in technological clusters located in Beijing and Shanghai. Technological clustering is an important advantage of the innovation landscape in emerging markets. Second, the paper underscores the importance of differentiating between different types of co-invention. The patent applications in this sample tend to unite inventors mostly from the US and China, and so multi-country applications involving subsidiaries in other countries are rare. Thus, the level of integration outside the center-host bandwidth is low. However, Chinese subsidiaries demonstrate high levels of autonomy by filing single-country applications, which implies that they are building their own research identity.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate firm behaviors on patent examination request under the deferred patent examination system in Korea. The authors examine firm decisions on whether and when to request patent examinations when they face both uncertainty about invention’s value and market competition.

The authors provide a simple theoretical model and test a couple of hypothesis using Korea patent data. The authors employ KIPO (Korean intellectual patent office) patent applications data during 2006–2009 and incorporate it with firm financial data retrieved from1 Korea investor service-financial analysis system (KIS-FAS) database in Korea. The authors use the variation in the probability of lapsed patent applications filed in the same year and in the same technology field (at the four-digit IPC class level) of a patent application i as a proxy for the value of uncertainty, and further use one minus a firm’s market share (at the three-digit SIC industry level) as an indicator of the market competition faced by the firm/applicant.

The authors find that the examination requests of firms in Korea have interesting bipolar distribution, and both uncertainty about an invention’s value and market competition have significant impacts on firm’s decision for examination request. Applicants tend to utilize option value of waiting when uncertainty is high, but market competition attenuates the option value: the higher the competition, the less likely applicants are to delay or forego examination.

The authors’ study makes interesting contributions to the literature on the optimal design of the patent system in general and the deferred patent examination request system in particular. By considering the roles of both uncertainty and market competition in firm decisions, it provides a more comprehensive perspective on the deferred patent examination system. The study also provides empirical evidences on the broader research topic regarding firm decision for irreversible investment when faced with both uncertainty and competition, for which a strand of theoretical literature exists but empirical literature is largely limited. This study, which explicitly takes into account uncertainty and market competition, extends this line of empirical literature and fills the gap in the literature.

The paper's aim is to build a model that predicts the optimum tactics for capitalizing on inventions within the context of competitive interaction among large firms. For patenting, the paper seeks to show how invention value and firm rivalry drive the tactics of competing, deterring competitors, retreating from markets, and cooperating. It also aims to explore the effects of the contingencies of patent bulking, technology complexity, spheres of influence, resource similarity, and complementary‐resource tacitness.

The work is conceptual.

The base model shows that patenting can be used to protect markets where there is high invention‐value and high rivalry. When both invention‐value and rivalry are low, the best tactic is to cooperate. When value is high and rivalry low, patenting can be used as a signaling and deterring mechanism, but when value is low and rivalry is high the best option is to let patents lapse and retreat from markets. The moderating effects of patent bulking, technology complexity, spheres of influence, resource similarity, and complementary‐resource tacitness affect rivalry and the amount of patenting that will be done.

The paper provides propositions for empirical testing that are predictive of firm performance, rivalry, and patent bulking. Despite the authors' attention to key contingencies, it is impossible to be completely comprehensive in addressing all contingencies.

The framework provides tactics for competing and, consequently, maximizing income and minimizing costs.

The work synthesizes extant thinking on patents and multipoint competition. While the base model should be valuable for managers, the overall work should be valuable for academics.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: to analyze to what extent innovation output of R & D collaborations, proxied by co-patenting activities in terms of quantity, characteristics and value, differs depending on whether the engaged R & D partners have a certain type of relationship (allies, suppliers and subsidiaries); to identify possible automakers co-patenting patterns taking into account the differences in the innovation output with their R & D partners.

To reach the aims, the authors matched two types of data: co-assigned patent portfolio of four automakers and relationship type between automakers and their co-assignees. Matching the company names of the two data sources allowed the authors to obtain the final data set used to carry out extensive descriptive and regression analysis, both on a firm- and patent-level.

Results show differences in the characteristics and the technological value of patented inventions in relation with the type of collaboration partner; they also support the authors in the identification of four co-patenting patterns (contingent, purposive, watchful and advanced) according to the co-patenting propensity and the presence of a preferred relationship type.

The paper contributes to the literature by investigating the presence of differences across the patenting activities of a selection of automakers and their supplier, allied and subsidiary firms. The issue related to patent value represents an emerging area of interest in the field of collaborations for innovation. The methodology constitutes a novelty by matching two different sources and standardizing the company names (“name game”) through an automated algorithm and a double manual check, by searching company web sites and corporate trees.

The main aim of the paper is to show the necessary convergence of two promising but under‐explored research fields, intellectics and inventics, into a new one, that of intellectual invention, and to discuss new ways of thinking which can be efficient in building an invention culture.

These purposes are achieved in an interdisciplinary way, in which the various scientific approaches are governed by a philosophical perspective that ensures the conceptual level and the unity of the discourse. The philosophical approach itself is practised in several specific fields and at various levels, being used in order to lay the foundations of a new domain of research. Specific theoretical problems are elucidated through concrete examples furnished by sciences and discussed from the perspective of inventics. Graphical representations help in giving a systemic and integrative perception of complex issues.

The paper defines in a comprehensive way the two partially studied and till now separately conceived research fields; delimitates and characterizes a new domain of study, of crucial theoretical and practical interest; analyses some types of intellectual techniques involved in all sorts of inventive activity; identifies the main new ways of thinking encouraged by the information technologies and shows their forms and manifestations, as well as the new values promoted by their development. There are proposed some improvements on sociological thinking from the perspective of inventive thinking. The emergence of an invention ethics is anticipated as a necessary component of an invention culture.

Proposes a new field of research, that of the intellectual invention, analyses the main instruments of its study and development, and uses the results of different sciences in order to lay the philosophical foundations of invention ethics as part of the future invention culture.