A Valley of Death in the innovation sequence: an economic investigation

Thomas Beard, George Ford, Thomas M Koutsky and Lawrence J Spiwak

Research Evaluation, 2009, vol. 18, issue 5, 343-356

Abstract: The road between a discovery generated from basic research to a commercial product or process is long and, according to some, rife with significant roadblocks. Innovators and investors alike routinely claim that a ‘funding gap’ or ‘Valley of Death’ exists between basic research and commercialization of a new product. We show that the standard explanations for underinvestment in R&D are not the cause of this phenomenon. Rather, the Valley of Death occurs only in the presence of ‘non-economic’ investments (such as government expenditures on basic research) that are made in very early stage research without sufficient attention to the likely investment decisions at later stages of the innovation process. Other implications for the Valley of Death of government funding of R&D are also considered. Some policy implications of these findings are provided. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.

Date: 2009
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.3152/095820209X481057 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:oup:rseval:v:18:y:2009:i:5:p:343-356

Access Statistics for this article

Research Evaluation is currently edited by Julia Melkers, Emanuela Reale and Thed van Leeuwen

More articles in Research Evaluation from Oxford University Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().