Study title

Firms employ a variety of means to protect their Intellectual Property (IP), including formal methods (eg patents, trademarks, copyrights), contractual agreements (confidentiality agreements and employment contracts) and informal methods (eg secrecy and lead time advantages). However, little is known about the ways in which Knowledge-intensive Business Service (KIBS) firms, in particular, profit from innovation. The so-called 'peculiarities' of services (eg intangibility, reverse service product life cycle, and client involvement in innovation) might affect the ways in which firms capture value from their IP. This project studies three closely intertwined issues around IP management by KIBS firms. it seeks to uncover possible links between a firm's competitive strategy and organisational approach to knowledge, on the one hand, and IP protection, on the other one it explores possible links between different value appropriation mechanisms and the innovation collaboration activity it explores whether and under what conditions business model innovation creates value for the key stakeholders. The empirical analysis adopts multivariate probit regressions and a unique survey of a maximum of 255 service product and process innovations that were introduced by 167 British and American publicly-traded KIBS firms.