Papers by Salvatore Torrisi
Technological
Competence accumulation and collaborative ventures: evidence from the
The lack of firm-level data on innovative activities has always constrained the development of em... more The lack of firm-level data on innovative activities has always constrained the development of empirical studies on innovation. More recently, the availability of large datasets on indicators such as R&D expenditures and patents has relaxed these constraints and spurred the growth of a new wave of research. However, measuring innovation still remains a difficult task for reasons linked to the quality of available indicators and the difficulty of integrating innovation indicators to other firm-level data.
Methods and Software for the HarmoniSation and Integration of Datasets: A test based on IP-related data and accounting databases with a large panel of companies at the worldwide level‖
presentation at the PatStat Conference-Conference on Patent Statistics for Decision Makers, Vienna, Sep 3, 2008
... Bronwyn H. Hall's website, a group of researchers at NBER is currently working on an... more ... Bronwyn H. Hall's website, a group of researchers at NBER is currently working on an update and extension of the NBER dataset up to December 2004. ... is a simplified version of the the tf–idf weight (term frequency–inverse document frequency) (Salton and Buckley, 1988). ...
We thank Rishab Ghosh and the participants in the EC DG IT study on "The effects of allowing... more We thank Rishab Ghosh and the participants in the EC DG IT study on "The effects of allowing patents claims for computer-implemented inventions " for discussing with us several issues concerning patents and IPR. Moreover, we would like to thank Armando Benincasa from Bureau Van Dijk, Elvio Ciccardini, and Gianluca Tarasconi from CESPRI- Bocconi University for their valuable assistance in data collection. Colin Webb has provided us with data on citations to EPO patents. Comments from seminar and conference
In the footsteps of the Silicon Valley? Indian and Irish software in the international division of labour
This paper analyses the development of software in India and Ireland. The development patterns of... more This paper analyses the development of software in India and Ireland. The development patterns of the software industry in Ireland and India clearly show both the advantages and disadvantages of being a follower. The most obvious advantage is the ability to sustain growth without a broad based set of technical capabilities, at least initially. With the leaders creating and defining markets, and possibly even the business models, and the policy and technical infrastructure required, many uncertainties are greatly reduced. Moreover, in many instances, multinationals from the leading countries can catalyse growth and may even, as in Ireland, account for a substantial part of the initial growth. On the other hand, relatively narrow sources of competitive advantage imply that the firms in the follower industries tend to be similar in capabilities, with competition among them transferring the bulk of the benefits to customers overseas. Sophisticated and well established competitors locate...
Technology inward licensing plays a crucial role in firm's technology strategy as a way to u... more Technology inward licensing plays a crucial role in firm's technology strategy as a way to undertake trajectories of search in the available technological space. The links between licensing and the patterns of firms ' technological diversification are still underdeveloped in the economics and management literature. The aim of our study is to explore these links in a sample of 224 licenses involving about 900 USPTO patents. The paper is centered on two theories. First, in line with the resource-based view, firms diversify through licensing-in knowledge and capabilities that can be easily combined with their existing capabilities. This constrains the span of technologies that are searched for by firms that enter the market for technologies. However, a broad technological profile increases firms ' absorptive capacity and hence reduces the cost of technological diversification through licensing. Also, for any given level of the breadth of firms ' technological profil...
strategy and business models in the film industry (Ebbers)
Academy of Management Proceedings
This paper investigates the validity of patent citations as indicators of knowledge flows between... more This paper investigates the validity of patent citations as indicators of knowledge flows between business organizations. It compares patent citations with inventors' assessment of the importance of business organizations as knowledge sources. We find sizeable measurement errors in citation-based indicators, which highlight strategic rationales for citing rather than knowledge transfers.
International Journal of Industrial Organization, 2010
This paper investigates the role of skills and the division of labor among participants in collec... more This paper investigates the role of skills and the division of labor among participants in collective inventions. Our analysis draws on a large sample of projects registered at Sourceforge.net, the world's largest incubator of open source software activity. We test the hypothesis that the level of skills of participants and their skill variety are important for project performance. Skill heterogeneity across participants is in line with two fundamental organizational features of the open source development model: team work and modular design. We also explore the hypothesis whether the level of modularization of project activities is an important predictor of performance. Our econometric estimations show that both skill level and skill heterogeneity positively affect projects' survival and performances. However, the impact of skill diversity is non linear. Design modularity is also positively associated with the performance of the project.
Explaining leadership in virtual teams: The case of open source software
Information Economics and Policy, 2008
This paper contributes to the open source software (OSS) literature by investigating the likeliho... more This paper contributes to the open source software (OSS) literature by investigating the likelihood that a participant becomes a project leader. Project leaders are key actors in a virtual community and are crucial to the success of the OSS model. Knowledge of the forces that lead to the emergence of project managers among the multitude of participants is still limited. We aim to fill this gap in the literature by analyzing the association between the roles played by an individual who is registered with a project, and a set of individual-level and ...
Industrial and Corporate Change, 2010
Dynacom TSER Projectt (Contract no. SOE1-CT97-1078)
The Economic Value of Knowledge and Inter-firm Technological ... approach has been used to calcul... more The Economic Value of Knowledge and Inter-firm Technological ... approach has been used to calculate the marginal shadow value of the knowledge assets from the ...
We are very grateful to Dietmar Harhoff for providing us with updated EPO patent data for this re... more We are very grateful to Dietmar Harhoff for providing us with updated EPO patent data for this revision
This paper provides novel empirical evidence on the private value of patents and R&D in European ... more This paper provides novel empirical evidence on the private value of patents and R&D in European firms during the period 1991-2004. We explore the relationship between firm's stock market value, patents, and "quality"-weighted patents issued by the European Patent Office (EPO) and the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). We find that Tobin's q is positively and significantly associated with R&D and patent stocks, but that only those patents taken out in both patent offices or at the USPTO alone seem to be valued. Either forward citations or a composite quality indicator based on forward citations, family size and the number of technical fields covered by the patent are modestly informative for value. Software patents account for a rising share of total patents in the USPTO and EPO. Moreover, some scholars of innovation and intellectual property rights argue that software and business methods patents on average are of poor quality and that these patents are applied for merely to build portfolios rather than for protection of real inventions. We found that such patents are considerably more valuable than ordinary patents, especially if they are taken out in the U.S. However their quality indicators are no more valuable than those of other patents, suggesting that their primary purpose may be to increase the size of the patent portfolio.
This paper provides novel empirical evidence on the private value of patents and R&D in European ... more This paper provides novel empirical evidence on the private value of patents and R&D in European firms during the period 1991-2004. We explore the relationship between firm's stock market value, patents, and "quality"-weighted patents issued by the European Patent Office (EPO) and the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). We find that Tobin's q is positively and significantly associated with R&D and patent stocks, but that only those patents taken out in both patent offices or at the USPTO alone seem to be valued. Either forward citations or a composite quality indicator based on forward citations, family size and the number of technical fields covered by the patent are modestly informative for value. Software patents account for a rising share of total patents in the USPTO and EPO. Moreover, some scholars of innovation and intellectual property rights argue that software and business methods patents on average are of poor quality and that these patents are app...
JEL No. G20,L86,O31,O34 We take a first look at financial patents at the European Patent Office (... more JEL No. G20,L86,O31,O34 We take a first look at financial patents at the European Patent Office (EPO). As is the case at the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), the number of financial patents in Europe has increased significantly in parallel with significant changes in payment and financial systems. Scholars have argued that financial patents, like other business methods patents, have low value and are owned for strategic reasons rather than for protecting real inventions. We find that established firms in non-financial sectors with diversified patent portfolios own a large share of financial patents at the EPO. However, new specialized technology providers in the financial area also hold a number of such patents. Decisions on the financial patent applications take longer and they are more likely to be refused by the patent office, suggesting greater uncertainty over validity than for other patents. They are also more likely to be opposed, which is consistent with the fact that...
This paper provides novel empirical evidence on the private value of patents and R&D in European ... more This paper provides novel empirical evidence on the private value of patents and R&D in European firms during the period 1991-2004. We explore the relationship between firm’s stock market value, patents, and ‘quality’-weighted patents issued by the European Patent Office (EPO) and the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). We find that Tobin’s q is positively and significantly associated with R&D and patent stocks, but that only those patents taken out in both patent offices or at the USPTO alone seem to be valued. Either forward citations or a composite quality indicator based on forward citations, family size and the number of technical fields covered by the patent are modestly informative for value. Software patents account for a rising share of total patents in the USPTO and EPO. Moreover, some scholars of innovation and intellectual property rights argue that software and business methods patents on average are of poor quality and that these patents are applied for merely to b...
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Papers by Salvatore Torrisi