Title: Intellectual property management, dynamic capabilities and competitive innovation in the commercial aircraft industry

Authors: Punyapat Saksupapchon; Kelvin W. Willoughby

Addresses: HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management, Jahnallee 59, 04109 Leipzig, Germany ' HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management, Jahnallee 59, 04109 Leipzig, Germany

Abstract: In this paper we combine insights from two streams of literature within the broad academic domain of strategic management - namely intellectual property management and dynamic capabilities - to advance our understanding of the dynamics of competition and innovation in technology-intensive industries dominated by large companies with highly complex products and businesses, large operational scale, and broad international reach. We argue that a firm's IP management capability ought to be viewed as a dynamic capability, as propounded by Teece et al. (1997) and Teece (2007), and we accordingly propose a generic competition-influenced evolutionary pattern of patent application strategies, embodying three development phases: 1) passive strategy, during the early phase; 2) aggressive strategy, during the growth phase; 3) sophisticated strategy at the maturity phase. We test our ideas through a study of the patenting behaviour of two major competing firms in the commercial aircraft industry.

Keywords: intellectual property; patent application strategies; dynamic capabilities; technological innovation; commercial aircraft industry; IP management; Airbus; Boeing.

DOI: 10.1504/IJIPM.2021.117176

International Journal of Intellectual Property Management, 2021 Vol.11 No.3, pp.236 - 262

Received: 07 May 2020
Accepted: 10 May 2020
Published online: 20 Aug 2021 *

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