The Strategic Approaches for a New Typology of Firm Patent Portfolios

Qin Yang and Marcel Minutolo
Additional contact information
Qin Yang: School of Business, Robert Morris University, 6001 University Blvd., Moon Township PA 15108, USA

International Journal of Innovation and Technology Management (IJITM), 2016, vol. 13, issue 02, 1-18

Abstract: Patents play an important role for companies to achieve competitive advantage. There is an increased recognition of the importance of patent portfolios as a key to achieve competitive advantage as opposed to any one patent. Hence, some researchers suggest that the true values of patents lie in the aggregation of some related patents rather than their individual worth. In addition, as firms increase their technological diversification so too do their patent portfolios. On the basis of portfolio theory, we build a typology of four types of patent portfolios characterized on the dimensions of technology coherence and synergistic economic value: black, cloud, star and constellation portfolios. Then, according to the characteristics of each type of portfolio, we propose that different strategic approaches should be applied to manage them to achieve superior performance. Further, we suggest that different types of patent portfolios have different effects on firms’ long-term and short-term performances in dynamic environments. Our paper enriches our understanding of the role that patent portfolios play to achieve superior firm performance by linking the management of firm-level resources to value creation in uncertain environments; and also provides important insights into future trends in the patent portfolios strategy in dynamic environments.

Keywords: Patent portfolios; portfolio strategy; technology coherence; potential value; firm performance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0219877016500127
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:wsi:ijitmx:v:13:y:2016:i:02:n:s0219877016500127

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from

DOI: 10.1142/S0219877016500127

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Innovation and Technology Management (IJITM) is currently edited by H K Tang

More articles in International Journal of Innovation and Technology Management (IJITM) from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tai Tone Lim ().