Sealing the deal in the market for technology
Prof. Dr. Elizabeth Webster, University of Melbourne and Intellectual Property Research Institute of Australia
In the simplest model of innovation, the same firm does the initial R&D investment and pushes the technology right through to the product market. However, in a world in which transactions are increasingly taking place across national borders, the innovation supply chain has become more fragmented. This empirical study examines the affect of the relational context in which transactions for immature technology occur on the chance that negotiations to transact immature technology succeed. Relational context means the way parties to a transaction met: whether they were former colleagues, met through a friend, or some sort of professional network or association. It tells us something about the trust (and other social institutions) which underpin the transaction. We find that the prior depth of the relationship and circumstantial knowledge about each other matters, and matters a lot. The chance that parties who know each other from a previous business are to conclude a transaction is 60 percentage points higher than those who met through a cold call.
About the speaker
Elizabeth Webster is the Director of the Intellectual Property Research Institute of Australia (IPRIA) and Professorial Fellow, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economics and Social Research at University of Melbourne, She has a PhD (ecomonics) from the University of Cambridge and ecomonics degrees from Monash University. Her research on the economics of innovation, intellectual property, as well as more general research on the performance of Australian enterprises is published regularly in both local and international academic journals. Beth sits on a number of government committees; makes regular presentations to industry and government audiences, both locally and overseas; and contributes to evidence-based policy debates in the media.
Venue: Tongersestraat 53 (School of Business and Economics Maastricht University). Room A0.23.
Date: 25 September 2012
Time: 12:00 - 13:30 CEST
