Research On Patenting Strategy And Its Performance Implication Of Chinese Firms

With the development of the knowledge-based economy and the in-depth progress of globalization process,patents have become important assets for firms’ competitive advantage,upgrading of industrial ecology,and counties’ international competitiveness.Concerns over firms’ patenting strategy have grown significantly during the last two decades.Not only has the issue become a hot topic in the business press and among business and political leaders,but a body of academic literature has also emerged,especially on how firms could make patenting strategy that fits internal and external environments.Based on the appropriability strategy theory,institutional theory and patent strategy theory,this dissertation investigates the mechanisms of firms’ patenting strategy by combining theoretical model,simulation,and empirical analysis.Specifically speaking,this dissertation explored the dynamic evolution of patenting strategy,the antecedents of patenting behavior,and performance implication of patenting strategy.With theoretical deduction,simulation,and empirical study,the findings are shown as follows:First,patent institutions define the basic rules for firms’ patenting strategies.Under the rules,firms learn how to make patenting strategy through interactions.Based on different institutional situations,firms have different evolutionary stable patenting strategy.Considering the technological catching-up stages and economic development,policymakers should construct appropriate institutional environments to shape firms’ strategies which fit the environments.Firms should adopt strategies with better survival probability.Second,several antecedents affect firms’ patenting strategy.R&D investment,financial slack,and political ties positively affect patenting behavior.Financial slack negatively moderates the influence of R&D investment on patenting behavior.Regional litigation pressure positively moderates the influence of R&D investment on patenting behavior.Regional market regime positively moderates the influence of R&D investment on patenting behavior.Finally,focusing on the performance implication of patenting strategy,we find that,generally,patent portfolio positively affects firm performance.Looking more closely,financial slack positively moderates the influence of patent portfolio on firm performance.Outsourcing ratio negatively moderates the influence of patent portfolio on firm performance.R&D investment positively moderates the influence of patent portfolio on firm performance.Political ties positively moderate the influence of patent portfolio on firm performance,which suggests a complementary role between political ties and patent portfolio.While the complementary approach between patents and political ties becomes more announced in the context characterized by low level of institutional litigation pressure and low level of marketization degree.The contributions and innovation of this study are shown as follows.Firstly,this dissertation was conducted in a transition economy,in this case,China,since previous research has mostly focused on western economies.Secondly,we studied the dynamic analysis of firms’ patenting strategy by implementing evolutionary theory and bounded rationality,while previous research used simplified models which often consist of two agents with full rationality.Thirdly,we examined the influence of heterogeneities,interaction of heterogeneities and institutional environments on firms’ patenting strategy,while prior research has been conducted mainly by surveys which examined the impact of factors on firms’ patenting strategy from a single analysis level.Finally,we examined how combinations of patent portfolio and other resources and institutions affect firm performance considering the deficiency of research on mechanism of value capture from patents.To sum up,this dissertation contributes to the theory of patent strategy by elaborating the mechanisms of firms’ patenting strategy and its performance implication.