Collaborative Research: Innovation and Information

摘要本项目研究企业对项目可行性、成功和未来潜在利润的信念差异如何影响研发(R&D)活动。这些差异可能是由于公司在类似项目中的先前经验或公司在研发过程中走得多远造成的。公司有动力去学习竞争对手所知道的东西。尽管在制药等一些行业，由于报告规定，了解竞争对手的进展可能会更容易，但在其他行业，由于企业保护自己的研发特定信息，了解竞争对手的进展情况可能更具挑战性。该项目围绕三个主要研究问题展开。首先，该项目探索了与他人分享私人信息的坚定激励措施及其对社会的影响。其次，这项研究考察了企业是否应该公开研发进展。第三，该项目研究了为什么初创公司专注于激进的创新和新产品，而老牌公司倾向于追求渐进式创新和对现有产品的改进的原因。该项目对于理解信息不对称和信息共享在初创企业和老牌企业的研发活动中的作用具有政策和监管意义。本研究侧重于竞争对手对项目可行性拥有不对称信息的研发竞赛。该项目探讨了三个问题。首先，如果公司能够承诺诚实，那么更好的信息对公司的好处似乎超过了对竞争的担忧。尽管公司应该有动力分享他们知道的东西，但这降低了成功的可能性，从社会角度来看是有害的。其次，如果企业不公开分享研发进展，它们就可以在研发上投入更多资金，因为竞争对手放弃某一研究领域的信息会对其他企业产生强烈的打击作用。第三，观察到的渐进式和激进式创新的规律性可以用信息来解释：规模较小的初创公司通常比规模较大的老牌公司更好地观察到研发活动，这会影响冒险行为。该项目在一个丰富的背景下研究了这些问题，其中包括对公司研发活动的不完善监控、资本约束和智力资本。该项目进一步考虑了渐进性和激进性的影响该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

AbstractThis project studies how differences in firms' beliefs about project feasibility, success and future potential profits affect research and development (R&D) activity. These differences may arise due to firms’ prior experience with similar projects or how farther along a firm is in R&D process. Firms have an incentive to learn what their rivals know. While learning about rivals’ progress may be easier in some industries such as pharmaceuticals due to reporting regulations, it is challenging in other industries as firms protect their R&D specific information. The project is centered around three major research questions. First, the project explores firm incentives to share private information with others and its impact on the society. Second, the research examines whether firms should make R&D progress public or not. Third, the project looks at the reasons behind why startups focus on radical innovations and new products whereas established firms tend to pursue incremental innovations and improvements to existing products. The project has policy and regulatory implications in understanding the role of information asymmetry and information sharing on R&D activities for startups and established firms.This research focuses on R&D races where rivals have asymmetric information about the feasibility of the project. The project explores three issues. First, if firms can commit to be truthful, then the benefits of better information to a firm seem to outweigh competitive concerns. Although firms should have an incentive to share what they know, this decreases the probability of success and is detrimental from a social perspective. Second, firms can invest more in R&D if they do not share R&D progress publicly as information on a rival abandoning a line of research has a strong discouragement effect on others. Third, the observed regularity about incremental and radical innovations can be explained in terms of information: Smaller startup firms can usually observe the R&D activity of larger, established firms better than the other way around, which affects risk taking behavior. This project studies these issues in a rich setting incorporating imperfect monitoring of R&D activity by firms, capital constraints and intellectual capital. The project further considers implications of incremental and radicalThis award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.