Innovating by eliminating: Technological resource divestiture and firms’ innovation performance

Nami Kim, Eonsoo Kim and Jongseon Lee

Journal of Business Research, 2021, vol. 123, issue C, 176-187

Abstract: While much of the prior research focused on the acquisition and accumulation aspect of technological resources, this study turns attention to a firm’s decision to divest its technological resources. It is important to continuously rearrange and reevaluate existing resources and make room for the additional acquisition through divestiture. This study mainly assumes technological resource divestitures as a proactive strategy rather than a result of upper level decision. This work expects that divestiture leads firms to enhance innovation performance. Suggesting newly coined concept, technological resource divestiture, this study examines the direct effect of resource divestiture on firms’ innovation in the technological domain. Moreover, this study scrutinizes the influence of the rhythm of divestiture and diversity of divesting technological dimension on innovation. It is conducted with data on patent expirations before the maximum granted duration and sell-offs in pharmaceutical industry provided by USPTO.

Keywords: Technological resource; Patent divestiture; Innovation; Breakthrough invention (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296320306366
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:123:y:2021:i:c:p:176-187

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2020.09.054

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Research is currently edited by A. G. Woodside

More articles in Journal of Business Research from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().