Cooperating to Commercialize Technology: A Dynamic Model of Fairness Perceptions, Experience, and Cooperation
Speaker
Abstract
| Technology entrepreneurship is an important driver of economic growth. Entrepreneurs must maintain cooperative ties with owners of any technology that they hope to bring to market. This study therefore explores the mechanisms underlying cooperative relationships between entrepreneurs and a university that owns the technology. An empirical study of 17 ventures serves to identify different cooperation patterns, in which in particular fairness perception influence the degree of cooperation. These perceptions change over time, partly as a function of accumulated experience and learning. A system dynamics (SD) model is developed that integrates insights from existing literature with the empirical findings to reveal the precise cooperation mechanisms related to the venture development overtime. Simulation results show that combinations of individual experience, fairness perceptions, and market circumstances lead to four different cooperation patterns. The model can especially explain changes in entrepreneurial cooperation as a result of changes in fairness perceptions, which depend on learning effects and entrepreneurial experience. Each of the identified and explained cooperation patterns thus has implications for research and delivers important insights for practitioners who need to manage these relationships in practice. |  |
| Contact information: | |
| Carolien Heintjes | |
