Technology Regimes and New Firm Formation

At least since Schumpeter (1934 and 1942), researchers have been interested in identifying the dimensions of technology regimes that facilitate new firm formation as a mode of technology exploitation. Using data on 1,397 patents assigned to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology during the 1980-1996 period, I show that four hypothesized dimensions of the technology regime—the age of the technical field, the tendency of the market toward segmentation, the effectiveness of patents, and the importance of complementary assets in marketing and distribution—influence the likelihood that new technology will be exploited through firm formation.