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This paper analyzes the importance given by venture capital (VC) firms to the different characteristics of the patent portfolio of a young innovative company (YIC). In an attempt to go beyond previous studies, the authors argue that not only is the size of a technological portfolio significant but also its nature. It is also examined whether the correlation between patents and VC financing varies across different industrial sectors and over different rounds of VC investments.

The empirical analysis has focused on a sample of 1,096 European YICs between the years 2010 and 2014. Target companies were identified in the monthly bulletins of Go4Venture, which reported the largest European deals and gathered information on the amount of VC financing. Additional data was derived from FinSMEs and crunchbase. Industrial sectors were differentiated according to their ability to appropriate the returns of innovation by relying on patent protection mechanisms. A multivariate regression framework at the patent family level was adopted to investigate empirical associations between the amount of VC financing and the characteristics of a YIC's patent portfolio.

The results confirm the positive value of patents. Both the size and the characteristics of a YIC patent portfolio have been found to be positively associated with the total amount of VC financing. Additionally, the correlation between a YIC patent portfolio and VC investment varies across industries and over rounds of funding. Although the number of patents is positively correlated with VC investments in sectors with strong Intellectual Property (IP) regimes, the same does not apply to sectors characterized by lower patent intensity, where qualitative metrics seem to have a stronger correlation. Significant differences have also been found for the different rounds of VC investments.

The limitations of this paper are related to data availability. Empirical associations have been investigated, but causal effects cannot be ascertained in this framework. The authors focused on a sample of firms that received VC funding. Several transactions were excluded, due to a lack of specifications pertaining to the round series. Furthermore, a number of potential drivers of the financed amounts, such as variables related to the founder or the management team, have not been considered in this study.

For firms operating in sectors with weak IP regimes, patents are positively associated with attracting equity capital, if they are the output of R&D collaborations and have higher technical merit. In industries where patent intensity is higher, patent portfolio size matters more than quality. This suggests that VC investors award innovation quality to cases in which patenting is less frequent. Since the results indicate that positive associations between patenting and VC financing are more significant in later stages, managers should plan their patenting strategy in advance to reap the related benefits, and then collect the premium at later VC stages.

In this paper, the importance given by VC firms to different characteristics of a YIC patent portfolio has been analyzed in terms of size, quality, and complexity. While previous empirical analyses mainly focused on a single sector, the authors have examined whether the relevance of patents for VC financing decisions varies across industries and over different rounds of investment. The geographical coverage of the sample is another novelty of the paper. Previous works focused on a limited number of countries, whereas this research has considered firms operating in several European countries.

The entrepreneurial capability (EC) environment refers to the general social and economic settings of a given local/regional entrepreneurship environment. The primary purpose of this study is to uncover key indicators of the EC milieu and test these components empirically within the context of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN)-5 economies to elucidate the current state of their EC environments, at the regional and national levels. To this end, the aim of this study is twofold. First, this work endeavors to explicate the determinants of EC, with aims of elucidating its association to commercial opportunities in (ASEAN)-5 economies, namely, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. Next, this study applies the developed theory, including the identified determinants of EC to empirically test the efficiency and imperative coefficients of variables that have an impact on perceived entrepreneurial capabilities within a given environment.

This research applies two frontier models, namely, the consistent estimation of fixed-effects and linear transformation stochastic frontier models, to assess the coefficients of significant EC variables for the panel sample. Data corresponding to the assessed variables were retrieved from the databases of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) – 2016 and the World Competitiveness Yearbook (WCY) – 2016, for the period, 2010-2016.

The attained results suggest that factors corresponding to the variables “Entrepreneurship as a good career choice” and “perceived opportunities” have played a significantly positive role on the EC environment of ASEAN 05, although findings suggest both factors may still be improved upon. Conversely, the “fear of failure rate” factor was shown to have exerted a negative impact on the efficiency of the EC environment of ASEAN 05. Other important variables – such as intellectual property rights, university education and knowledge transfer rate – were shown to generate a positive impact on the EC environment of these economies.

This study makes an important contribution to the entrepreneurship literature and can stimulate policymakers to rethink the EC settings of ASEAN-05 in their pursuit of an innovation-driven region.

The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between heterogeneous collaborative networks and firm performance, using the resource-based view (RBV) and its extension through the knowledge-based view (KBV) as theoretical lens. Moreover, the authors examine family management and intellectual property rights (IPRs) as contingent factors that enhance the effectiveness of heterogeneous collaborative networks in achieving superior firm performance.

The hypotheses are developed and checked by using a panel data sample of 10,985 firm-year observations from 1,766 Spanish manufacturing firms over the period 2007–2016.

The results indicate that heterogeneous collaborative networks positively influence firm performance. Furthermore, the positive impact of these innovation networks on firm performance is reinforced by high levels of family management, and such effect is even stronger when there exists high levels of IPRs.

This research is the first, to our knowledge, to provide important new insights into the manner in which the effect of both family management and IPRs have the potential to amplify the performance gains attained from heterogenous collaborative networks.