ABSTRACT
The central question of this work is do technological regimes and size matter when firms attempt to commercialize their innovations? Contrary to earlier studies on innovation commercialization, the current article is based on the convergence of technologies often necessary to create new products and processes and thus captures the complexity of innovation commercialization in the industry. It uses innovation commercialization data from 375 Canadian biotech firms to investigate commercialization strategies and the role played by technological regimes and size. Results show that the “patenting portfolio race’’ is not an inevitable outcome of firms racing to commercialize their innovations. Biotech firms use a variety of strategies to commercialize their innovations. In particular, these innovation commercialization strategies vary with firms’ size and the technological regime. Thus, multidimensional innovation commercialization policies will be more effective in helping knowledge-intensive firms get the most out of their innovations.
Keywords
innovation commercialization; biotech firms; commercialization strategies; patents; propensity to patent