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Entrepreneurial human capital, complementary assets, and takeover probability

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Abstract

Although acquisitions of high-tech entrepreneurial firms are of great popularity within the technology transfer process, the limited empirical evidence on this type of technology transfer shows that these acquisitions often lead to dismal results in that a large number of acquired key inventors leave their companies after an acquisition and those that remain exhibit poor performance. This study aims at explaining this phenomenon and adds additional empirical results and explanations to the matching theory of ownership changes. Using a hand collected dataset of all German IPOs from 1997 until 2006, this study shows that the probability of ownership in a young and high-tech firm’s assets being reallocated by means of a takeover significantly decreases with the amount of intangible and complementary assets that are owned by the owner-manager.

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Acknowledgments

We wish to thank participants of the EARIE Annual Conference 2009 in Ljubljana/Slovenia, of the X. Symposium of the GEABA in Vallendar/Germany, and of research workshops at the University of Konstanz/Germany and the University of Zurich/Switzerland. We are especially grateful for feedback on this research by Peter-J. Jost, Ulrich Lichtenthaler, Winfried Pohlmeier, Joel Stiebale, Stefano Trento, and Peter Welzel.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Business Administration, University of Augsburg, Universitaetsstr. 16, 86159, Augsburg, Germany

    Erik E. Lehmann & Thorsten V. Braun

  2. GBM, Augsburg, Germany

    Erik E. Lehmann

  3. CCSE, Augsburg, Germany

    Erik E. Lehmann

  4. CCSE, Bergamo, Italy

    Erik E. Lehmann

  5. Department of Economics, University of Augsburg, Augsburg, Germany

    Sebastian Krispin

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  1. Erik E. Lehmann
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  2. Thorsten V. Braun
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Correspondence to Erik E. Lehmann.

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Lehmann, E.E., Braun, T.V. & Krispin, S. Entrepreneurial human capital, complementary assets, and takeover probability. J Technol Transf 37, 589–608 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10961-011-9225-8

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