Technology acquisition through licensing. Implications for firm strategy

Nowadays licensing practices have increased in importance and relevance driving the widespread diffusion of markets for technologies. Firms are shifting from a tactical to a strategic attitude towards licensing, addressing both business and corporate level objectives. The Open Innovation Paradigm has been embraced. Firms rely more and more on collaboration and external sourcing of knowledge. This new model of innovation requires firms to leverage on external technologies to unlock the potential of firms’ internal innovative efforts. In this context, firms’ competitive advantage depends both on their ability to recognize available opportunities inside and outside their boundaries and on their readiness to exploit them in order to fuel their innovation process dynamically. Licensing is one of the ways available to firm to ripe the advantages associated to an open attitude in technology strategy. From the licensee’s point view this implies challenging the so-called not-invented-here syndrome, affecting the more traditional firms that emphasize the myth of internal research and development supremacy. This also entails understanding the so-called cognitive constraints affecting the perfect functioning of markets for technologies that are associated to the costs for the assimilation, integration and exploitation of external knowledge by recipient firms. My thesis aimed at shedding light on new interesting issues associated to in-licensing activities that have been neglected by the literature on licensing and markets for technologies. The reason for this gap is associated to the “perspective bias” affecting the works within this stream of research. With very few notable exceptions, they have been generally concerned with the investigation of the so-called licensing dilemma of the licensor – whether to license out or to internally exploit the in-house developed technologies, while neglecting the licensee’s perspective. In my opinion, this has left rooms for improving the understanding of the determinants and conditions affecting licensing-in practices. From the licensee’s viewpoint, the licensing strategy deals with the search, integration, assimilation, exploitation of external technologies. As such it lies at the very hearth of firm’s technology strategy. Improving our understanding of this strategy is thus required to assess the full implications of in-licensing decisions as they shape firms’ innovation patterns and technological capabilities evolution. It also allow for understanding the so-called cognitive constraints associated to the not-invented-here syndrome. In recognition of that, the aim of my work is to contribute to the theoretical and empirical literature explaining the determinants of the licensee’s behavior, by providing a comprehensive theoretical framework as well as ad-hoc conceptual tools to understand and overcome frictions and to ease the achievement of satisfactory technology transfer agreements in the marketplace. Aiming at this, I investigate licensing-in in three different fashions developed in three research papers. In the first work, I investigate the links between licensing and the patterns of firms’ technological search diversification according to the framework of references of the Search literature, Resource-based Theory and the theory of general purpose technologies. In the second paper - that continues where the first one left off – I analyze the new concept of learning-bylicensing, in terms of development of new knowledge inside the licensee firms (e.g. new patents) some years after the acquisition of the license, according to the Dynamic Capabilities perspective. Finally, in the third study, Ideal with the determinants of the remuneration structure of patent licenses (form and amount), and in particular on the role of the upfront fee from the licensee’s perspective. Aiming at this, I combine the insights of two theoretical approaches: agency and real options theory.

Retribuzione flessibile e contrattazione collettiva

Nel presente lavoro vengono esaminate le forme impiegate dalla contrattazione collettiva per rendere aleatorio il trattamento economico dei lavoratori subordinati. Dapprima ci si occupa del limite alla “flessibilizzazione” della retribuzione dei lavoratori subordinati che viene individuato nella “retribuzione sufficiente” di cui all’art. 36 Cost., qualificata come elemento essenziale del contratto. Di seguito si sofferma l’attenzione sulla retribuzione di produttività e di redditività dei lavoratori del settore privato e sul trattamento accessorio dei dipendenti pubblici privatizzati. Nonostante a queste quote della retribuzione sia astrattamente conferita una funzione incentivante, in concreto non la svolgono: nel lavoro privato a causa della politica egualitaria del sindacato e della “modalità” di determinazione degli obiettivi, nel lavoro pubblico perché questa parte della retribuzione è stata tradizionalmente erogata “a pioggia”. Nel terzo capitolo si prendono in considerazione le liti che possono sorgere se, nel periodo di tempo che va dalla fissazione degli obiettivi a quando si deve verificare il loro conseguimento, il datore di lavoro apporti modifiche organizzative in grado di ripercuotersi sulla capacità dei prestatori di raggiungere i risultati. Al fine di risolvere tale questione, in chiusura del secondo capitolo, la clausola in tema di retribuzione flessibile è stata classificata come condizione sospensiva in quanto una parte del trattamento economico, aggiuntiva alla retribuzione “base”, viene subordinata al conseguimento di obiettivi di produttività e redditività qualificabili come eventi futuri ed incerti. Tale qualificazione è volta a consentire l’applicazione dell’art. 1359 c.c. nelle controversie sopra descritte: se i lavoratori non conseguono gli obiettivi a causa di modifiche che il datore di lavoro ha apportato all’organizzazione, si può fingere che l’evento (che non si è verificato per una condotta imputabile al datore di lavoro) si sia verificato e, di conseguenza, erogare la retribuzione di risultato ai prestatori.

Effects of 2013 Cap reform on land market: regionalized farm payments and changes in farmers’ intended behaviour

The CAP reform process has been a central issue for agricultural economics research in recent years, and is gaining further attention in view of the post-2013 perspectives (Viaggi et al., 2010; Bartolini et al., 2011). Today the CAP is in the middle of a new reform process. Through the debate generated by the official proposals, published in October 2011 (COM(2011)625/3), the European Union (EU) engaged in a revision of the CAP ended on 26 June 2013 when a political agreement has been reached (IP/13/613, MEMO-13-621 and IP/13/864). In particular, in Italy the switch of the payment regime from historical to regional bases will take place. The underlying assumption is that the shift to regionalized payments changes the remuneration of inputs and has an impact on farmers’ allocation of fixed resources. In this context, farmers are expected to adjust their plans to the new policy environment as the regionalization of support is meant to create a change in incentives faced by farmers. The objective of this thesis is to provide an ex-ante analysis of the potential impact of the introduction of regionalized payments, within the post-2013 CAP reform, on the land market. Regionalized payments seem to produce differentiated effects and contribute to a general (slight) increase of land exchanges. The individual reaction to the new payments introduction would be different depending on location and specialization. These effects seem to be also strongly influenced by the difference in historical payments endowment and value, i.e. by the previous historical system of distribution of payments.