Four essays on capability investment decision-making
- Autores: Susanne Evelyn Koster
- Directores de la Tesis: Bruno Cassiman (dir. tes.)
- Lectura: En la Universidad de Navarra ( España ) en 2019
- Idioma: español
- Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Giovanni Valentini (presid.), Thomas Maximilan Klueter (secret.), Neus Palomeras Vilches (voc.), Vareska Van de Vrande (voc.), Anu Wadhwa (voc.)
- Programa de doctorado: Programa de Doctorado en Ciencias de la Dirección por la Universidad de Navarra
- Materias:
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- Resumen
Four Essays On Capability Investment Decision-Making The four dissertation chapters examine the investment decisions of large firms with regard to renewing their capability bases. In the first chapter, I critically assess measures pertaining to the technological distance between an investor and a capability investment. I argue that the measures position investments differently because each measure captures a different type of distance: coreness, overlap, and similarity. Using mathematical modeling and an empirical example, I demonstrate that measures of overlap and similarity are sensitive to the size and diversity of the investment's capability base.
The second and third chapters jointly offer a theory on corporate venture capital (CVC) investing and reveal the important trade-offs that corporate investors face. In the second chapter, I conceptualize CVC investing as a hybrid investment model in which a corporate investor creates an option to exploit a venture's knowledge, and an option to generate a capital gain by exiting the investment. I examine whether there is a trade-off between the two types of investment returns and argue that corporate investors exercise control over the venture to generate knowledge transfers which they lose when they exit the investment to generate capital gains. Using a dataset comprised of corporate investors in the chemical industry, I find a trade-off between retaining an investment in the portfolio and exiting an investment when the investment has the potential to create knowledge transfers and capital gains. In the third chapter, I build a formal model of CVC investing that describes the conditions under which the investment objectives of corporate investors create a conflict of interests with a venture and a co-investor. I argue that when corporate investors aim to exploit a venture's knowledge, they need to be willing to compensate a venture for the appropriation risk and the opportunity costs of not pursuing an exit, and to buy out the co-investors when they decide to retain an investment in the portfolio.
The fourth chapter demonstrates that renewing a firm's capability base not only requires investment decisions but also divestment decisions, such as licensing-out decisions. Using a dataset composed of licensing deals by large pharmaceutical firms, this chapter demonstrates that the licensing-out decision of a single technology should be viewed in relationship to the firm's development portfolio and the portfolios of its competitors.
