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The purpose of the paper is to advance a framework that can assess and analyze the value of patent portfolios. On this purpose, the framework develops a conceptual and comprehensive index, the patent portfolio value index (PPVI), to assess the patent innovation level and suggest economic-strategic guidelines.

The authors have designed and applied a framework that synthesizes into a single index the results of a multiple criteria approach, based on information derived from quantitative objective data (claims, citations, and market coverage), information related to qualitative determinants (strategic positioning and economic importance), and information derived from decision makers’ perceptions and judgments.

The authors have applied the PPVI to the 3,532 patent portfolio documents in an Italian worldwide player in aerospace and defense market. The combined analysis, provided by the PPVI and a qualitative synoptic representation, has made it possible to understand the strategic positioning and alignment of patents with the core business of the company. The results of the analysis have provided managers with the necessary suggestions regarding action items to be performed: to reinforce, license, try to dismiss, or sell some of the examined patents of the portfolios.

The PPVI supplies a quick procedure to ascertain the profitability of patents and accounts for the value of a patent portfolio from an internal business perspective.

As it is built and defined, the PPVI shows elements of novelty compared to the other indexes existing in the literature, in that it follows a multiple criteria approach by merging quantitative and qualitative information.

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 study aims to propose a methodology by integrating three approaches, namely, internal core technology, external knowledge flow and industrial technology development to help companies improve their decision-making quality for technology planning and enhance their research and development (R&D) portfolio efficiency.

The primary focus of this study is thin-film solar technology and patent data is retrieved from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) database. This study presents a methodology based on the proposed integrated analysis method, constructed with patent indicators, centrality analysis of social networks and main path analysis.

The results of this study can be itemized as – the core technological competency: companies involved in two specific technology fields have lower strength in R&D portfolio than leading companies with single-core technology. Knowledge flow: most companies in a network are knowledge producers/absorbers and technological development: diverse source and sink nodes were identified in the global main path during 1997-2003, 2004-2010 and 2011-2017.

Latecomer companies can emulate leaders’ innovation and enhance their technological competence to seek niche technology. Using the global main path, companies monitor outdated technologies that can be replaced by new technologies and aid to plan R&D strategy and implement appropriate strategic decisions avoiding path dependency.

The knowledge accumulation process helps in identifying the change of position and the role of companies; understanding the trend of industrial technology knowledge helps companies to develop new technology and direct strategic decisions. The novelty of this research lies in the integrated approach of three methods aiding industries to find their internal core technical competencies and identify the external position in the competitive market.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a systematic approach to exploring potential partners for open innovation in order to facilitate the process of technological collaboration.

The proposed approach utilizes patent information that is considered the most effective data to investigate innovation activities by applying morphology analysis (MA) and generative topology map (GTM) to the process to identify the configurations of technologies and visualize the collected patent information. In particular, diverse informative indices can assist researchers in deriving appropriate partners for technological cooperation.

The hybrid approach that combines MA, GTM, and indices is useful to discover technological opportunity, identify necessary technologies and explore potential partners. The systematic process can overcome the limitations of existing approaches that depend on the insights and strategic decisions of top management, reflect a superficial relationship among firms and mostly fail to consider both theoretical and practical approaches to retrieve potential partners.

The results of this paper will help practitioners, academic researchers, and policy makers link a pair of partners who can maximize the synergy of collaboration in a systematic manner. The proposed approach is illustrated to show the validity of the process with a case of light emitting diode (LED) technology. In addition, the social cost for collaboration can be reduced by applying the proposed approach in open innovation.

This paper tackles the important issue of exploring appropriate partners by applying a systematic approach that utilizes text mining, MA and GTM because existing research mostly deals with ad-hoc processes. The proposed approach utilizes multiple methodologies of data mining and technology forecasting to derive promising technology areas in a systematic manner and then employs critical indices to explore proper partners. Thus, this approach considers both quantitative and qualitative methodologies to suggest a sophisticated tool for successful open innovation. Moreover, a real case – LED case was illustrated to demonstrate that the proposed approach can be employed to implement technological cooperation.

The purpose of this paper is to examine if the structure and design of CEO compensation has any effect on firm innovation. It further investigates the effectiveness of each component of portfolio of compensation incentives in encouraging innovation.

This study uses systems of simultaneous equations to model the interdependence between compensation incentives and measures of firm innovation.

Results indicate that the pay‐performance sensitivity of the CEO portfolio of compensation incentives is positively related to investment in R&D expenditures, number of patents and citations. Options in general are more effective than stocks. However, within the options portfolio, recently awarded and unvested options are more effective than previously awarded and vested options. Restricted stock is more effective than unrestricted stock.

Measuring innovation output is difficult as innovation could take different forms, including business model innovation, which does not appear in the patent data.

Stock options encourage investment in value‐increasing innovations and should remain a significant part of managerial compensation. If the firm awards stock, it should only award restricted stock.

This study uses comprehensive measures of compensation incentives and firm innovation. It views incentives as a portfolio of stock and options and uses incentives in their entirety. It examines the effectiveness of each component of the portfolio in encouraging innovation. It measures innovation as investment into the innovation process (R&D expenditures) and the resulting success of that investment (patents and citations).

This study aims to investigate whether and how different sentiments affect the stock market’s reaction to the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) information.

The portfolio approach, with time-varying risk factor loadings and the asset-pricing models, is borrowed from the finance literature to investigate the ACSI-performance relationship. A direct sentiment index is used to examine how investors’ optimistic, neutral and pessimistic sentiments affect the aforementioned relation.

This paper finds that customer satisfaction is a valuable intangible asset that generates positive abnormal returns. On average, investing in the Strong-ACSI Portfolio is superior to investing in the market index. Even when the stock market holds pessimistic beliefs, investors can beat the market by investing in firms that score well on customer satisfaction. The out-performance of our zero-cost, long–short ACSI strategy also confirms the mispricing of ACSI information in pessimistic periods.

Findings are limited to firms covered by the ACSI data.

Finance research has further documented evidence of the stock market under-reacting to intangible information. For example, firms with higher research and development expenditures, advertising, patent citations and employee satisfaction all earn superior returns. Literature also proves that investors efficiently react to tangible information, whereas they undervalue intangible information. In summary, combining our results and those reported in the literature, customer satisfaction is value-relevant for both investors and firm management, particularly in pessimistic periods.

This study is the first to investigate how sentiment affects the positive ACSI-performance relationship, while considering the time-varying property of risk factors. This study is also the first to show that ACSI plays a more important role during pessimistic periods. This study contributes to the growing literature on the marketing–finance interface by providing better understanding of how investor emotional states affect their perceptions and valuations of customer satisfaction.

Firms are increasingly depending on supplier portfolios in the quest for firm innovation. However, whether concentrated supplier portfolios are beneficial to innovation remains highly disputed. This study aims to investigate the effect of supplier portfolio concentration on firm innovation and the contingencies that shape this effect.

The authors build on the knowledge search view to theorize a U-shaped effect of supplier portfolio concentration on firm innovation and further propose that the U-shaped effect is contingent on financial slack and growth opportunities. The authors collected panel data from 1,320 manufacturing firms in China. The negative binomial regression analyses were performed to test the hypotheses.

Supplier portfolio concentration has a U-shaped effect on firm innovation. This U-shaped effect is weakened and flipped by financial slack but strengthened by growth opportunities.

The findings extend current understandings of the influence of supplier portfolio on firm innovation by clarifying the U-shaped effect of supplier portfolio concentration on innovation and the circumstances under which supplier portfolio concentration is more effective for firm innovation.

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.

This study aims to improve the understanding of the factors that influence the performance of universities' technology transfer offices (TTOs), units charged with the responsibility for aiding the commercialization of research innovations.

To empirically test the link between factors affecting TTO performance and whether these effects are contingent on a country-specific environment, survey data were collected from 187 TTO stakeholders (TTO heads, TTO employees and university researchers) in 18 countries of Europe and Japan, and structural equation modeling (SEM) was used.

The results show that the internal embeddedness of a TTO within a university is the most important factor in determining a TTO's performance. A TTO's performance is positively affected by its marketing capabilities and social embeddedness. Strict patent portfolio management has no significant impact on TTO performance in Japan and has a negative effect on European TTOs' performance.

This study highlights the role of organizational and interorganizational factors in TTO performance; moreover, this is one of the few multi-continent (Europe and Asia) studies in the domain of university–industry collaborations, expanding the current understanding of the contingent roles of the region of operation, which has remained unexplored, as extant studies were typically conducted in only one country.

The purpose of this study is twofold: first, to determine if pharmaceutical companies can be grouped based on their espoused values, and second, to examine the relationship between these values and company reputation.

A descriptive study design is used with two separate analyses: cluster analysis for grouping the companies; and descriptive data analysis for determining cluster differences.

The findings suggest that there are three value clusters: competent, community and interpersonal, with the community group showing the highest relative reputation, and the interpersonal cluster as the lowest. Brand portfolio composition appears to positively contribute to reputation. The effect of portfolio specialization is based on a company’s closeness to its therapeutic community, which may be influenced by the outward characteristics of its values.

Future research should examine the longitudinal effects of values on reputation combined with case studies.

Regardless of cluster classification, all firms should develop strong ties with their therapeutic communities using both personal and digital/omnichannel strategies.

A company’s values are becoming an important consideration for all customers and stakeholders.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to systematically examine the activities of leading pharmaceutical firms to link a specific value cluster to company reputation.