The IP Paradox for New Zealand Scientific Start-Ups: Navigating Value and Impediment in Technology Transfer

Sam Mutsamwira

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Abstract: This study examines how scientist-entrepreneurs in New Zealand experience and navigate intellectual property (IP) during the technology transfer process. Using interpretative phenomenological analysis, the study draws on semi-structured interviews with fourteen scientist-entrepreneurs, analysed via reflexive thematic analysis. The findings reveal a central IP Paradox; IP is simultaneously an indispensable prerequisite for technology transfer and a significant impediment. Useful theories, the Innovation Incentive Theory, Knowledge Spillover Theory of Entrepreneurship, and Resource-Based View, only partially explain this phenomenon, as managing IP introduces profound strategic tensions, costs, and uncertainties. The analysis elucidates the IP Paradox for scientific start-ups, which complements and adds on to these dominant theoretical frameworks, and then develops an IP Navigation Matrix as a sense-making and decision-support tool grounded in entrepreneurs’ lived experience. This provides a nuanced understanding of IP’s dual role, offering direct managerial and policy implications for improving technology transfer, supporting academic entrepreneurship, and fostering innovation in New Zealand and other small open economies. The findings also provide practical insights for IP practitioners advising scientific ventures in New Zealand. Keywords: intellectual property protection; scientific start-ups; patents; trade secrets; technology transfer; New Zealand

Date: 2026-05-31
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:socarx:ywp2a_v1

DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/ywp2a_v1

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