— In-Licensing, Acquisitions, and Research Productivity in the
Biopharmaceutical Industry
Marco Ceccagnoli, College of Management, Georgia Institute of Technology
The objective of this research is to empirically evaluate the impact of technology sourcing strategies on R&D productivity of public U.S., European and Japanese biopharmaceutical companies. The increasing importance of technology sourcing from outside the firm coupled with intense restructuring activity during the 1990s and recent declines in R&D productivity of large pharmaceutical companies are analyzed in order to achieve a deeper understanding of the determinants of the overall impact on research productivity of firms outsourcing R&D. Specifically, we focus on the role of in-licensing versus acquisitions, within a global perspective, and use multiple measures of R&D productivity based on patents and pipeline related measures.

— Publishing and Patenting in Universities: The Role of Personal and
Employment-Related Characteristics
Shiferaw Gurmu, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University
Using panel data assembled from recent waves of the Survey of Doctorate Recipients, this research will examine the relationship between patenting and the characteristics of academic scientists. We examine the question of who in US universities is patenting and publishing. We study patent and publication activities using panel count data characterized by excess of zeros and skewed distributions. This research will provide insights into how changes in the characteristics of researchers may increase our understanding of university innovation. The proposed investigation also contributes to the policy debate over the issue of whether there is a trade-off between basic and applied research.

— Local Geographic Factors Driving Medical Device Entrepreneurship
David N. Ku, College of Management and College of Engineering,
Georgia Institute of Technology
The development of medical devices is an important area of academic study at universities and commercialization requires entrepreneurial activity. The legal and regulatory environment surrounding medical devices dictates the time-to-market for most of these products. We propose to study the drivers of growth in the medical device arena. The study will collect data specific to geographic clusters and focus on the role of Georgia Entrepreneurship policy. Factors such as state funds, patents, research grants, local venture funds, regulatory counsel, and medical device firms will be compared to valuations, number of employees, and sales within a geographic cluster.

— Market Valuations of New Firms in Emerging Industries: The Role of
Strategic Choices
Frank T. Rothaermel, College of Management, Georgia Institute of Technology
While an important question to entrepreneurship scholars and investors alike, limited research has addressed how the strategic choices of new firms affect their market valuation. We are planning to address this question by developing an integrative theoretical framework in which we combine signaling and sense making theoretical perspectives to argue that in valuing new firms investors combine the information they can obtain from observing different strategic choices of firms. We plan to test this theoretical model on a longitudinal panel of Internet start-ups.

— Legal, Institutional and Organizational Factors Causing Innovation
Krishnamurthy Subramanian, Goizueta Business School, Emory University
The endogenous growth literature posits that innovation and entrepreneurship are essential drivers of economic growth. Legal, institutional, and organizational factors such as takeover defenses erected by companies, laws enabling or inhibiting takeover of companies, the extent of protection provided to investors, and the bankruptcy code affect incentives to take risk, on the one hand, and the ext of agency costs stemming from separation of ownership and control, on the other hand. Therefore, these factors potentially impact the level of innovation and entrepreneurship in an economy. The aim of this research project is to examine how these factors affect innovation. In keeping with my current work, I plan to develop theories linking these factors to innovation and then to test them empirically using patents as proxies for innovation.

— Open Innovation in a Global Perspective: From Invention to Innovation
in the U.S. and Japan
John P. Walsh, School of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology
We will collect detailed survey data on a sample of patented inventions, including sources of ideas, commercialization strategies, inventor background, patent value, and other key variables. We will compare our findings to those from a matched survey of Japanese inventors. These data will provide a unique opportunity to help answer important questions about how the institutional environment affects the process of generating patented inventions and the equally important and difficult process of turning inventions into innovations.

— The Effect of State R&D Tax Credits in Stimulating State Industrial R&D Activity
Laura Wheeler, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University
The study focuses on the impact of state R&D tax credits on the amount of state industrial R&D activity by considering the level of the credit and design. Much research has been conducted on the effect of the Federal R&E tax credit in stimulating industrial R&D expenditures nationally. In addition to other incentives, many states offer a tax credit in an effort to attract high-tech employers. Less is understood about the influence of this incentive on the location decisions of R&D activities, especially when compared to other factors that are believed to influence the location of firms and R&D activity.