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This paper deals with R&D priority setting. It advocates the introduction of strategic capital budgeting methodologies that will unite the hitherto largely independent processes of strategic planning and capital budgeting. Significant advances in economics and finance theory regarding valuing derivative securities, such as futures and options, and in computing power over the past 20 years make it feasible now to capture in explicit analytical terms the flexibility inherent in active strategy and management of R&D resources. R&D strategies can now be analyzed as chains of ‘real options’. The methodology can, in principle, be applied to all kinds of research investments, including longer-term, more basic research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper empirically analyzes the behavior of technology licensors using a large dataset of US-traded companies. The stock of technological knowledge of the licensor, this company's prior exposure to licensing, the rate of growth of its primary sector, the strength of IPR protection, and the nature of the technology are found to be important determinants of the propensity to sell technology through nonexclusive licenses. Smaller firms in industries with ‘simpler’ technologies tend to sell technology through exclusive licenses more than others. In contrast, larger firms in industries dealing with more ‘complex’ technologies engage relatively more in cross licensing. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the first half of the 1980s, when the first data were put together to map the sudden burst of inter-firm cooperation in Europe and the U.S., it has been established that partnerships constitute an important mechanism of business interaction, learning, and resource and market access around the world. The pace of technological advance has accelerated significantly, partly as a result of increasing competition through globalization. In addition to being an outcome of competitive pressures, however, technology is an enabler of globalization. Special attention has been paid in the literature to the characteristics of knowledge-based partnering among firms, universities, and other research organizations. The new mechanisms entail the formation of dense webs of inter-organizational networks that provide the private sector with the necessary flexibility to achieve multiple objectives in the face of intense international competition. Formal and informal partnering could indeed be perceived as a continuum where formal enterprise cooperation, clustering, and informal networking are complementary modes of operation.