Abstract
In this paper we compare the relationship between a firm’s innovation capital and the likelihood that a firm will commercialize an invention. Our index of innovation capital is the product of the firm’s human capital, social capital, and reputational capital. We find from our empirical experiment, which uses Small Business Innovation Research data, that innovation capital is a statistically more important entrepreneurial input to the innovation output of commercialization than any of its components.
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Notes
Kijek (2012) provides an excellent literature review of the topic innovation capital.
Current funding guidelines allow, under certain conditions, an agency to increase Phase I and Phase II awards by up to 50%.
After the SBIR program was reauthorized in 2008, Congress again asked for a survey and a series of case studies. This second wave of SBIR data was collected in 2011 and 2014. While some data from the second data collection effort was available to us, to maintain confidentiality of the awarded firm the dollar amount of the Phase II award was not available. As discussed below, the amount of that award is conceptually an important regressor in our models; thus, the data used herein are from the 2005 NRC survey.
The U.S. SBIR program has been emulated in many countries including Sweden, Russia, the United Kingdom, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. See Hayter et al. (2018).
While we do not have information on the reasons that a particular firm would receive previous and related Phase II awards, the finds that we present below might be interpreted as suggestive evidence of what Antonelli and Crespi (2013) have called a virtuous Matthew effect.
See Kijek (2012).
Cited from Audretsch and Lehmann (2016).
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Audretsch, D.B., Link, A.N. Innovation capital. J Technol Transf 43, 1760–1767 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10961-018-9700-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10961-018-9700-6