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The Rejuvenation of Inventors Through Corporate Spinouts

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  • Bruno Cirillo

    (SKEMA Business School, GREDEG - Groupe de Recherche en Droit, Economie et Gestion - UNS - Université Nice Sophia Antipolis (1965 - 2019) - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - UniCA - Université Côte d'Azur)

  • Stefano Brusoni

    (ETH Zürich - Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule - Swiss Federal Institute of Technology [Zürich])

  • Giovanni Valentini

    (IESE Business School - IESE Business School)

Abstract
This article focuses on corporate spinouts as a strategy that can rejuvenate the inventive efforts of inventors with a long tenure in the same company. We rely on an unbalanced panel of 5,604 inventor-year observations to study a matched sample of 431 inventors employed by the Xerox Corporation and find evidence in support of three predictions. First, inventors who join a spinout increase the extent of exploration in their inventive activities. Second, they decrease the extent to which they rely on the parent organization’s knowledge. Third, because long-tenured employees, through socialization, tend to progressively adopt more exploitative behavior than short-tenured members, they benefit relatively more from the spinout experience. These results are robust to several econometric specifications that try to account for the endogeneity of the inventors’ decision to join the spinout, for the fact that spinouts’ inventive activity may be intrinsically different from that of the parent company, and for the possible presence of novel external stimuli for those who join spinouts. The data provide large-sample evidence consistent with the idea that socialization reduces opportunities for organizational learning; we discuss the implications for theory and practice.
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Suggested Citation

  • Bruno Cirillo & Stefano Brusoni & Giovanni Valentini, 2014. "The Rejuvenation of Inventors Through Corporate Spinouts," Post-Print halshs-01948175, HAL.
  • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-01948175
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    2. Hu, Feng & Xi, Xun & Zhang, Yueyue, 2021. "Influencing mechanism of reverse knowledge spillover on investment enterprises’ technological progress: An empirical examination of Chinese firms," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 169(C).
    3. Stephanie Lange & Marcus Wagner, 2021. "The influence of exploratory versus exploitative acquisitions on innovation output in the biotechnology industry," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 56(2), pages 659-680, February.
    4. Bahoo-Torodi, Aliasghar & Torrisi, Salvatore, 2022. "When do spinouts benefit from market overlap with parent firms?," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 37(6).
    5. Hamza-Orlinska, Aneta & Maj, Jolanta & Shantz, Amanda & Vassilopoulou, Joana, 2024. "Unlearning diversity management," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 59(2).
    6. Matteo Landoni & dt ogilvie, 2022. "In Search of the Spin-Out Entrepreneur," JOItmC, MDPI, vol. 8(3), pages 1-17, June.
    7. Braunerhjelm, Pontus & Lappi, Emma, 2023. "Employees' entrepreneurial human capital and firm performance," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(2).
    8. van de Vrande, V.J.A., 2017. "Collaborative Innovation: Creating Opportunities in a Changing World," ERIM Inaugural Address Series Research in Management EIA-2017-071-S&E, Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM), ERIM is the joint research institute of the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University and the Erasmus School of Economics (ESE) at Erasmus University Rotterdam..
    9. Egle Vaznyte & Petra Andries & Sarah Demeulemeester, 2021. "“Don’t leave me this way!” Drivers of parental hostility and employee spin-offs’ performance," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 57(1), pages 265-293, June.
    10. Cirillo, Bruno & Breschi, Stefano & Prencipe, Andrea, 2018. "Divide to connect: Reorganization through R&D unit spinout as linking context of intra-corporate networks," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 47(9), pages 1585-1600.
    11. Varshney, Mayank & Jain, Amit, 2023. "Technology acquisition following inventor exit in the biopharmaceutical industry," Technovation, Elsevier, vol. 126(C).
    12. Emma Lappi, 2024. "New hires, adjustment costs, and knowledge transfer—evidence from the mobility of entrepreneurs and skills on firm productivity," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 33(3), pages 712-737.
    13. Bruno Cirillo, 2019. "External Learning Strategies and Technological Search Output: Spinout Strategy and Corporate Invention Quality," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 30(2), pages 361-382, March.
    14. Dirk Martignoni & Thomas Keil, 2021. "It did not work? Unlearn and try again—Unlearning success and failure beliefs in changing environments," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(6), pages 1057-1082, June.
    15. Urbig, Diemo & Reif, Karina & Lengsfeld, Stephan & Procher, Vivien D., 2021. "Promoting or preventing entrepreneurship? Employers’ perceptions of and reactions to employees’ entrepreneurial side jobs," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 172(C).

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