Research On The Capability Of Intellectual Property In Firms Based On Competitive Advantage

This paper tries to establish the theoretic relationship model between intellectual property, capabilities of intellectual property and competitive advantage, and does some researches on the relationship and its influential factors between the capabilities of intellectual property and competitive advantage, based on the context of firms'experiences in China. The paper is also based on the former theoretic fruits in the theory of industrial position, resource-based view, and the theory of core competence and dynamic capabilities, and knowledge-based view. Questionnaire and case study are applied in this paper.Our research indicates that intellectual property is the intellectual assets which are created by creative intellectual activity and protected by law. Different from tangible assets, the nature of knowledge products, which are the objects of intellectual property, is intangible. It is the intangible nature and other attributes, e.g. monopoly, timeliness, and regionality that determines the intellectual property is flexible resource. In the dynamic and uncertain environment, it is the flexible characteristic of IP that enhances the firms to adapt to the changing technology and market situation and react to the changes with their flexible intellectual property and obtain competitive advantage. Anyway, it is necessary for firms to create, utilize, protect and organize their different intellectual property, e.g. patent, trademark, copyright, and trade secrets etc. according to their business strategy. It means that the capability of intellectual property is the link between intellectual property and competitive advantage. It is an important path to develop the capability of intellectual property for firms to obtain competitive advantage with intellectual property.The capability of intellectual property is defined the capability by which firms create, utilize, protect, and organize patent, trademark, copyright, trade secrets, and other types of intellectual property for competitive advantage. This paper deconstructs the capabilities of intellectual property composed of the static type factors and the dynamic action factors and presents the measure indexes and mathematic expression of the capabilities of intellectual property. According to the function and position of intellectual property in the value creation and business strategy of firms, The capabilities of intellectual property are divided into five hierarchies, e.g. negative pattern, defensive pattern, cost pattern, profit pattern, and integrative pattern.This paper also empirically studies the correlation between the capabilities of intellectual property and competitive advantage and its influential factors with the methodologies of descriptive statistic, multivariate statistic, and structural equation model (SEM) based on the data from questionnaires. The conclusions are: the correlation between the capabilities of intellectual property and competitive advantage is strongly positive; equity structure, source of competence, scale of firm, and market structure are the influential factors to the correlation between the capabilities of intellectual property and competitive advantage. At last, this paper verifies the value and influencing path of intellectual property in the process of obtaining innovation revenue and competitive advantage for the latecomer firms and presents the strategies of intellectual property management based on the different technology level in Grace, CNEGC Changhong.