Using What You Know: Patented Knowledge in Incumbent Firms and Employee Entrepreneurship
研究发现，员工对专利价值的高估会增加其创业可能性，但若企业商业化该专利、许可给第三方或专利技术范围广，则创业概率下降；双方都认为有价值但企业未商业化时，创业最可能发生。
Prior studies have shown that the acquisition of relevant knowledge by employees in existing firms is associated with the creation of new firms through employee entrepreneurship. Some researchers propose that the transition to entrepreneurship may be explained by established firms undervaluing knowledge created by employees, whereas other scholars maintain that firm strategies may lead to the underutilization of knowledge. We ask the question of which of these drivers is more pronounced as an explanation of employee entrepreneurship and what technological factors matter in this relationship. Analyzing a unique data set, we find that the likelihood of employee entrepreneurship increases with the inventor’s assessment of the value of a patent for an invention developed while at the incumbent firm but dramatically decreases when the invention protected by the patent is commercialized by the firm, licensed to third parties, interdependent with other firms’ inventions protected by patents, or technologically broad. We also find that conditional on high valuation by the inventor, a matching high valuation by the firm further increases the likelihood of transitioning to entrepreneurship. In combination, we show that a situation when both the inventor and the firm consider the invention valuable but the firm ends up not commercializing the invention is more predictive of employee entrepreneurship than simple differences in assessing the value of the invention. The study refines our understanding of the drivers of entrepreneurship by underscoring the “strategic” explanation of employee entrepreneurship.