Smart-stolen tacit knowledge: institutional arrangements for invited piracy

摘要

Because it is considered an asset, knowledge is frequently protected by intellectual property rights and strong regime appropriability. Piracy has been studied widely in the literature as deterrents to R&D activity. These prior studies are mostly quantitative and focus on explicit knowledge; however, this article extends beyond these studies and considers both explicit and tacit knowledge in a qualitative exploration of three longitudinal case studies that examine one research centre's spin-offs. We distinguish a certain class of entrepreneurs we call 'smart pirate-entrepreneurs'. Smart pirate-entrepreneurs benefit from both explicit and tacit knowledge - instead of solely explicit knowledge - when maintaining a balance between these types of knowledge. The institutions that house these spin-offs, which we call 'smart stolen-institutions', benefit from a 'return on piracy' by multiplying royalty income from an increasing number of smart pirate-entrepreneurs. Both parties take advantage of an 'invited piracy business model' in the search for legitimacy.