TY  - JOUR
AU  - Åstebro,Thomas
AU  - Serrano,Carlos J.
TI  - Business Partners, Financing, and the Commercialization of Inventions
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 17181
PY  - 2011
Y2  - June 2011
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w17181
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w17181.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Thomas Astebro
HEC Paris
E-Mail: astebro@hec.fr

Carlos J. Serrano
Rotman School of Management
University of Toronto
105 St. George Street
Toronto,  ON M5S 3E6
CANADA
Tel: 416/946-3404
E-Mail: carlos.serrano@utoronto.ca
AB  - This paper studies the effect of business partners on the commercialization of nvention based ventures, and it assesses the relative importance of partners’ human and social capital on commercialization outcomes. Projects run by partnerships were five times more likely to reach commercialization, and they had mean revenues approximately ten times greater than projects run by solo-entrepreneurs. These gross differences may be due both to business partners’ value added and to selection. After controlling for selection effects and observed/unobserved heterogeneity, our smallest estimate of partner value added approximately doubles the probability of commercialization and increases expected revenues by 29% at the sample mean.
ER  -