Licencing as a commercialisation strategy under different institutional contexts: a comparative empirical analysis of German and Chinese biotechnology firms

The aim of this study is to investigate how country differences between German and Chinese biotechnology firms affect the usage of licencing as a commercialisation strategy for future development. Firms in the biotechnology industry especially can use this strategy to gain access to the marketplaces, since such firms are often not fully integrated and do not concentrate on the early steps in the biotechnology value chain, such as research and testing. We examine the use of licencing as a commercialisation strategy in Germany and China. In Germany, we studied firms in biotechnology regional networks in Bayern. All regions were selected to ensure a high structural comparability, but they also differ systematically concerning the products manufactured. In China, we focused on biotechnology companies in Yangtze River Delta region (Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang). These data are compared with similar data collected previously in the USA. Based on the empirical data, innovation capacity, the structure of patent owners and incentive mechanism, the regulatory and IPR regimes of different countries are illustrated to explain the differences.