Title
The Circulation of Ideas in Firms and Markets
Abstract
This paper models the generation, circulation, and completion of new ideas, showing how markets and innovative firms complement each other in a symbiotic relationship. Novel ideas are initially incomplete and require further insight before yielding a valuable innovation. Finding the complementary piece requires ideas to circulate, which creates appropriation risks. Circulation of ideas in markets ensures efficient completion, but because ideas can be appropriated, market entrepreneurs underinvest in idea generation. Firms can establish boundaries that guarantee safe circulation of internal ideas, but because firms need to limit idea circulation, they may fail to achieve completion. Spin-offs allow firms to benefit from the market's strength at idea completion, whereas markets benefit from firms' strength at generating new ideas. The model predicts diverse organizational forms (internal ventures, spin-offs, and start-ups) coexisting and mutually reinforcing each other. The analysis provides new insights into the structure of innovation-driven clusters such as Silicon Valley. This paper was accepted by Bruno Cassiman, business strategy.
Year
DOI
Venue
2011
10.1287/mnsc.1110.1385
IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics
Keywords
DocType
Volume
efficient completion,safe circulation,novel idea,idea circulation,internal venture,internal idea,idea completion,idea generation,new idea,new insight,working paper,entrepreneurship,innovation
Journal
57
Issue
ISSN
Citations 
10
0025-1909
3
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.63
7
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Thomas Hellmann1163.97
enrico c perotti230.63