Capturing benefits from tomorrow's technology in today's products

About this book

In this paper, I propose and examine a specific means by which firm R&D experience may be helping firms to improve their current-technology products: Firms that conduct future-technology R&D may be better at adapting components from related future technologies for use in their current-technology products. I use patent data to test whether automobile carburetor suppliers with higher levels of future-technology R&D activity are better at adapting components from related future technologies for use in carburetors.