Intellectual Property Research Institute of Australia

Professor Bruno Cassiman

A 2005 Booz Allen Hamilton study of 1000 innovative firms claims there was no obvious relationship between R&D investment and corporate success. These results contradict abundant economic evidence relating to positive relationships between R&D investment and economic growth. This presentation will address this apparent disconnect between firm and economy-level benefits. It will analyse how firms can organise their innovation processes to maximize return from R&D activity within the economy. A successful case of a research corporation in the semi conductor industry will be used to illustrate how to structure research collaboration and intellectual property rights to achieve this aim.

Bruno Cassiman (Ph.D. 1996, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University) is Professor of Strategy at the Strategic Management Department of IESE Business School in Barcelona and the Department of Managerial Economics, Strategy and Innovation at the K.U.Leuven in Belgium. His research interests have centered on the economics of strategy and innovation with a particular focus on the connections between science and industry in the innovation process.  His work has been published in several of the leading Economics and Management journals including The American Economic Review, Management Science, Industrial and Corporate Change, and, Research Policy. Furthermore, he is the department editor of the Business Strategy department at Management Science and member of the editorial board of several other journals. He co-edited a book on the relation between mergers and acquisitions and innovation (M&A and Innovation: The Innovation Impact, Edward Elgar 2006) and has been a consultant to the European Commission and the Belgian and Catalan governments on matters of innovation policy and to several companies on matters of (innovation) strategy.

Associate Professor Don O'Sullivan

Firm performance and value are dependent on intangible assets which do not typically appear of the firm’s balance sheet. This creates particular challenges for senior executives, investors and boards. This presentation examines the motivations and challenges associated with incentivizing top management to attend to intangible assets. We examine how leading nonfinancial indicators may be incorporated in schemes that already include commonly used contemporaneous financial indicators such as earnings and stock performance. The seminar will include a presentation and discussion of results from recent research on this topic as it relates to the inclusion of measures of customer equity in CEO compensation schemes.

Don is a member of the marketing faculty at Melbourne Business School. His primary academic interest is in the impact of marketing activities on company performance. Don is an active member of the Chief Marketing Officers (CMO) Council of the USA. Since 2003 he has led the Council's Marketing Performance Measurement (MPM) research program, and is a co-author of the Council's Report on this topic. His research has been published in leading international journals such as Journal of Marketing, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, International Journal of Research in Marketing and Marketing Letters. Don has consulted on marketing performance measurement and marketing communications for a wide variety of companies. Previously, Don was Client Services Director at a marketing services agency targeting the European technology sector.